Turf it out: is it time to say goodbye to artificial grass?

It's neat, easy - and a staggering 2bn global market. But as plastic grass takes over our cities, some say that it's green only in colour

If your attention during the Women's World Cup was on the pitch rather than the players, you might have noticed that the matches were all played on real grass. That was a hard-won change, made after the US team complained to Fifa that they sustained more injuries on artificial turf.

In private gardens, however, the opposite trend is happening: British gardens are being dug up and replaced with plastic grass. But this isn't the flaky, fading stuff on which oranges were once displayed at the greengrocer. Today's artificial grass is nearly identical to the real thing.