Artificial or natural turf: what the Linköping study found

In 2025, researchers at Linköping University published a life cycle assessment in Cleaner Environmental Systems comparing artificial and natural turf football pitches in Nordic climates, over ten, twenty and thirty years. The study is by Mikael Säberg and Emma Lindkvist, of the Department of Management and Engineering.

Their conclusion favours artificial turf. But it comes with two reservations, and those are the part worth reading.

The first concerns end of life: artificial turf only wins if the rubber granule is collected and reused, and the worn carpet goes to heat recovery. Without that, the advantage disappears.

The second concerns us directly. The researchers note that natural turf owes most of its footprint to maintenance — mowing several times a week, fertilising, aerating, dressing — and that this work is still commonly done with combustion-engine machines. They write plainly that with electrified machinery "it's a whole new ball game": natural turf then becomes the more environmentally friendly option.

In other words, the verdict does not rest on the surface alone. It rests on what drives across it. That is exactly what we build: electric, autonomous robots, for mowing as well as for brushing. The study also notes that maintaining an artificial pitch comes down to brushing once or twice a week, harrowing once or twice a month, and one deep clean of the granule a year — a rhythm an autonomous machine keeps without tying up any staff.

We did not fund this study and it does not mention us. That makes it all the more worth reading.