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Wind turbine blades can’t be recycled, so they’re piling up in landfills
- kube-system 7y agoSeems like a pretty inert material, definitely a good candidate for being in a landfill vs. alternatives. I would say it's a bigger environmental issue that: > In the European Union, which strictly regulates material that can go into landfills, some blades are burned in kilns that create cement or in power plants. But their energy content is weak and uneven and the burning fiberglass emits pollutants.
- nicktelford 7y agoWaste incinerators, at least in Europe, are subject to very strict emissions regulations. As a result, they tend to have modern emissions collection systems that extract most of the toxic exhaust gases and other pollutants.
- kube-system 7y agoA turbine blade that hasn't been burned releases even fewer emissions.
- nicktelford 7y agoVery true, and I agree that landfilling them isn't a particularly big problem. I just wanted to point out that incinerating them isn't quite as bad as it sounds.
- jascii 7y agoAirborne emissions maybe, the eventual mechanical breakdown of plastics will deposit microplastics into our water systems.
- clon 7y agoThis is worrying. I presume they have some scrubbers at least? Despite all the global warming alarms, the Earth is still a thermally open system. In terms of toxic materials, pollutants and interesting new molecules, Earth is a closed system - they stay here for us to deal with. Personally, I am more worried by us poisoning ourselves long before we cook ourselves.
- jascii 7y agoWhile both are valid concerns, pretty much the entire scientific establishment disagrees with your priorities.
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y agoThis is one of the cons of this green energy movement, there is a shitload of waste from solar, wind, and batteries that nobody wants to talk about.
- ahartmetz 7y agoPeople are bad at comparing, say, 10k tons of solid waste to 10M tons of CO2. That doesn't mean that they are equally bad. I think it's fine not to talk about it because people will easily get stupid ideas like renewables being just as bad for the environment. Cost, land / real estate, storage, and transport are some real problems.
- ben7799 7y agoWorse than the millions of tons of pollutants released per second every day all over the world from non-green energy? Non-green energy releases more than 2 million tons/second of CO2 alone every day. There probably haven' been 2 million tons of turbine blades produced in history.
- cptskippy 7y ago> a shitload of waste How does it compare to traditional energy sources in terms of volume and toxicity?
- wklauss 7y agoThe fact that we are discussing a published article seems to suggest somebody wants to talk about it. Also, non renewable sources of energy produce a ton of waste as well! Petroleum refining, for example, is notoriously wasteful. More info: https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/hazard/web/html/index-63.html https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/hazard/web/html/index-63.ht... In this case, it seems more like a logistics problem than an environmental one since the blades are made from inert materials and therefore good candidates for landfill. I'm assuming the cost does not justify crushing it for other uses but it could be done at some point if needed.
- hristov 7y agoNo there isn't. The waste is very limited and quite benign compared to fossil fuel waste. Take these turbine blades. Ok, you have to put them into a landfill after 20 years of use, but as far as things you have to put into a landfill, it is the best you can ask for -- it does not pose a danger to the environment, it will not leak poisons into the groundwater. More or less it will just sit there forever. In comparison, coal and oil produce air pollution that you cannot sequester, that you have to release in the air for people to breather. Oil further produces liquid waste that is very difficult to sequester and regularly destroys the environment, and poisons drinking water. Coal further produces massive amounts of coal ash, that is incredibly dangerous and hard to store and regularly gets released into the air or the drinking water when hit by extreme whether. Nuclear produces waste that must be continuously cooled at great cost so that it does not set itself on fire and release massive amounts of radioactive gasses. Even then, the complex cooling systems regularly fail, and do occasionally release massive amounts of radioactive gasses. All of the above not only produce much more waste but their waste is far more dangerous and damaging.
- sk0g 7y agoI was going to ask if they couldn't be crushed/ ground up and reused as filler in construction, etc, but looks like a company is already on it. Nice!
- RosanaAnaDana 7y agoMy quick read of it lands on them not being toxic, just large and difficult to manage. Seems like they could be used as aggregate in road construction or fill or just about whatever. Likewise, its not like they break down into some shockingly toxic biproduct, so burying them is a fine solution unless refurbishment becomes a real possibility.
- sk0g 7y agoSeems like direct reuse is not possible due to the blades reaching end of life, but I feel like airplane blades have a much higher threshold for operating health than windmills, could there be some potential for repurposing there? Then again, I wouldn't want a blade snapping off and falling on me if I'm strolling through a field...
- nicktelford 7y agoAeroplane wings and wind turbine blades are extremely different. They are made from completely different materials, have completely different shapes and are designed for different purposes. I can't possibly see how either could ever be repurposed for the other.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gibolt 7y agoThis is better by a significant margin than any fossil fuel use the turbine is offsetting. Yes, some material will be wasted, but it is a tiny fraction of the far worse alternative. I've seen this as a reason not to switch several times, without anyone considering the sheer physical quantity of fuel any one consumer burns into the atmosphere.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoThe lesser evil by an order of magnitude (I think.) Even building a hut in Amazon disturbs nature but it beats a lot of other things, so let's encourage building huts (you get the idea)
- IanDrake 7y agoSo we should live in huts?
- isoskeles 7y agoNo, not us, them. You know, those people, for whom hut-living is appropriate. They shouldn’t move into homes like the ones we live in, a hut in the Amazon near some really big snakes will do just fine.
- IanDrake 7y agoI'm glad someone here gets it.
- ahoy 7y agoHi, this seems to be your first time encountering the concept of "Analogy." I've included a link that I hope will be helpful *https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/analogy https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/analo...
- jascii 7y agoI think it is pretty clear the previous poster was making a hypothetical statement and I have a bit of a hard time believing you are sincere in your statement. Please prove me wrong.
- jimrandomh 7y agoI don't see why anyone should care? Finding a way to recycle wind turbine blades might shave a fraction of a percent off the cost of wind turbines, but that's it. Putting them in landfills is discarding a potential resource, but not an important one.
- ianai 7y agoSeems like something that could eventually be used by wildlife, too. Drastically improved from extraction and emission.
- BitwiseFool 7y agoWhy not sink them and make artificial reefs?
- dbcurtis 7y agoInteresting thought, but some problems that come to mind are: 1) Is the density of fiberglass near or lower than that of water? If so, then they are very "sinky". 2) What toxins will leach out of the fiberglass resins after prolonged exposure to sea water? 3) Will the resin matrix decompose and release glass fibers into the sea water? Buried in a landfill they are mostly inert. I would not be so sure that would be true after prolonged exposure to sea water.
- scblock 7y agoIt is true that turbine blades can't easily be recycled. It's also true that they do not represent a large waste stream. I am glad to hear people are working on better solutions.
- UI_at_80x24 7y agoFUD for "green" tech/energy source alternatives? --checks source: bloomberg Yeah that's what I thought. Better switch back to coal because that doesn't take up room in the landfills.
- melling 7y agoCoal in the United States is dying fast. I believe coal is down to 20% electricity generation. Natural gas is simply cheaper. Fourth generation nuclear power plants look promising, for example: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/next-generation-nuclear/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/next-generation-n... Perhaps we can use more hydrogen in our future: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2020/01/09/hydrogen-on-the-rise-at-ces-from-drones-and-daimler-trucks-to-toyotas-city-of-the-future/#53f0c08339e2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2020/01/09/hydrogen...
- ianai 7y agoUntil solar panels are painted onto surfaces all options need to be in use. Perhaps even then.
- jfengel 7y agoIn the US, largish numbers of people live in places that have historically mined a lot of coal. And by a historical quirk, many of those places are in states that are closely divided between two political parties. A further historical quirk makes those states all-or-nothing in some political elections. So by appealing to the people who mine coal, you can tip an enormous amount of political power. That makes the mining of coal a massively important issue, because -- rather than despite -- its diminishing contribution to power generation.
- UI_at_80x24 7y agoThis is so true it's painful. I feel bad for these people. I really do. The writing has been on the wall for decades that coal is a bad horse to back, and poverty is keeping their options limited. This is another example of why we need a better social safety net. Let's retrain those people with skills that will better suit them and their families. There is no reason that they should suffer with this dead-end life/career/poverty.
- malkia 7y agoImagine a fort built out of them!
- DonHopkins 7y agoOr a Bjork music video!
- theklub 7y agoI feel like you could def recycle them, at the very least cut them up/reshape them into smaller turbine blades.
- ben7799 7y agoThis seems like a clickbait/scare-mongering/right-wing hit piece. The real story is not that they can't be dealt, with, more like companies are just being lazy and not dealing with the problem. The article goes on to mention there's already progress on dealing with this waste.. And this waste is not doing any of the things the fossil fuel industry is so good at. The blades are not burning up in the atmosphere, they're not being ground up and dumped in the ocean, they're not leaching super dangerous liquid chemicals into the soil/water, etc.. No different than the fear mongering that batteries or electric cars are way worse than tail pipe emissions and oil industry pollution for ICE vehicles.
- 2038AD 7y agoLow Tech Magazine has some articles on using wood to make more sustainable turbines https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/wooden-wind-turbines.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/wooden-wind-turbines...
- vernie 7y agoDamn, back to coal I guess.
- AtlasBarfed 7y agoThis is ultimately a FUD article, likely pushed by oil+gas advertisers and good old sensationalism. And, oh look, there's already recycling uses planned for them. Articles like this are for "newspaper scoring", where an issue is broken down into a set of bullet points that are pro and con. As long as the count/score of the bullet points are the same for each side, then the newspaper gets to declare itself fair and balanced. No heed is taken to the actual impact or importance of the individual bullet points. Unfortunately, the political consultants also know that overwhelmed voter minds also work this way.
- protonimitate 7y agoGenuine question regarding landfills: What are the real environmental effects of stuff "piling up in landfills"? I hear that "land filling" is bad but have never gotten a strong reason as to why. Obviously toxic/nuclear materials sitting in landfill is bad, but for other materials, what's the real harm? Is land filling a better option, then say, ocean dumping (again, for non-toxic materials)?
- imtringued 7y agoLand filling is bad in the context of throwaway consumer goods that are only used once such as a plastic bag or air tight plastic wrapping. There is also the aspect of expensive appliances breaking that are not repairable. They will have to be sent to the landfill early. However, this bad reputation absolutely makes no sense in the context of a paid off investment that lasted multiple decades and resulted in a good return.
- trenning 7y agoCould they maybe be repurposed as transmission towers? They're long but are they strong enough for that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_tower
- Gys 7y agoSomeone told me once that building and maintaining a wind turbine takes more (or same amount of) energy then produced by that same wind turbine in its lifetime. I failed to find research to back that up. Maybe anyone here knows more?
- lancewiggs 7y agoI’d look on the climate changer denier debunking websites. That’s the sort of trope that gets rolled out by the fossil fuel “think tanks” and denier troll farms. Example: https://www.desmogblog.com/institute-energy-research-admits-it-was-behind-anti-wind-study https://www.desmogblog.com/institute-energy-research-admits-...
- imtringued 7y agoIf that were true then you would expect countries with wind turbines to produce more CO2 emissions than countries that didn't.
- stallmanite 7y agoOnly if they’re being manufactured in the country where they’re used.
- jamez1 7y agoTaking the subsidies out and examining the profitability of all the companies on the supply chain tends to add up to a loss. Given there isn't much labor involved, energy costs are a good candidate for the lack of profitability. If the input energy costs more than the money the turbine makes, there's a good chance that the turbine doesn't make enough energy to produce itself.
- lancewiggs 7y agoThere is considerable energy and funding being applied to car ion sequestration. Burying fiberglass, or carbon fibre, which does not decompose (creating methane) is sequestering carbon. So it’s the right thing to do.
- neonate 7y agohttps://archive.md/olTU8 https://archive.md/olTU8
- 8bitsrule 7y agoThat 'can't be recycled' clickbait headline is completely refuted by TFA which quotes from one company already doing it. "One start-up, Global Fiberglass Solutions, developed a method to break down blades and press them into pellets and fiber boards to be used for flooring and walls.... 'We can process 99.9% of a blade and handle about 6,000 to 7,000 blades a year per plant...'
- avmich 7y agoFiberglass is roughly glass in the fiber form. Glass was recycled for ages, just melt it and produce new products from molten glass.
- protastus 7y agoFiberglass is a composite that contains a lot of resin. It's not pure glass.
- avmich 7y agoResin can be chemically removed or even burned out. Surely it's a question of economy, among other things, but at least we have a choice of technological approaches.
- eru 7y agoYou could do that, but that would be getting rid of most of what makes fibreglass interesting and expensive. Recycling glass isn't that much better than just using fresh sand.
- anonsivalley652 7y agoThe blades aren't just fiberglass but a complex mixture of FRPs which includes glass, plastic, binders and resins. Furthermore, they're layered and vary with distance from the hub and position on the airfoil. Recycling them isn't impossible, just more difficult because of the nature of separating components and removing undesirable/unreusable components. Although the do carry incredible forces (not quite in the region of turbojet/turbofan blades but still impressive), there's probably more work to be done to make the blades fully lifecycle-designed to make them easier to recycle.
- chaz6 7y agoFibreglass can be reused to make cement which has the benefit of reducing its production emissions by up to 16%. https://www.compositesworld.com/blog/post/recycled-composites-from-wind-turbine-blades-used-for-cement-co-processing https://www.compositesworld.com/blog/post/recycled-composite...
- pauljurczak 7y agoBuild a section of The Great Southern Wall with them? ;-)
- imtringued 7y agoHating landfills is very popular for some reason. The materials have been taken from the earth and now they return to the earth. The problem with CO2 is that it doesn't go back where it came from.
- ReptileMan 7y agoLandfills are great for inert materials. Or ones that decompose nicely. The problem is that we throw a lot of stuff that is toxic and can leak into the environment/water supply. A modern electronic equipment has pretty good part of the periodic table inside.
- stallmanite 7y agoI feel the same way. Landfills will be very convenient places to mine in the future.
- beerandt 7y agoThey would have been even better if we hadn't been paying to remove all the moderate value but easy to separate recyclables and ship them overseas. At some point those may be economically worth recycling, instead of us paying Asia to take them.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoIt does seem quite wasteful to dig it out of the ground only to put it back in again. Especially since it seems some people are extracting value from it.
- kumarvvr 7y agoI am curious. Can't these be thrown in near oceans containing coral reefs and then turn them into new coral reef support structures? Looks like these would be best for such a use.