
Kids playground built from discarded wind turbine parts (2017) - fludlight
https://lifeandsoulmagazine.com/2017/11/12/wikado-playground-kids-playground-built-from-discarded-wind-turbine-parts/
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dusted
Aren't wind turbine blades made of generally annoying/nasty stuff such as
various interesting epoxy components and glass fiber? I've seen how sick
working with manufacturing can make people, so I'm not sure I'd want kids
exposed, since they'll crawl around on them and touch them, likely wearing the
material down and releasing small particles that may get into the skin or
airways.

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tpkj
An NPR article on the topic: "Unfurling The Waste Problem Caused By Wind
Energy"

[https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-
waste...](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-
problem-caused-by-wind-energy)

"...Ninety percent of a turbine's parts can be recycled or sold, according to
Van Vleet, but the blades, made of a tough but pliable mix of resin and
fiberglass — similar to what spaceship parts are made from — are a different
story.

'The blades are kind of a dud because they have no value,' he said.

Decommissioned blades are also notoriously difficult and expensive to
transport. They can be anywhere from 100 to 300 feet long and need to be cut
up onsite before getting trucked away on specialized equipment — which costs
money — to the landfill. ..."

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mcv
In that case using them for playground and similar projects sounds like a
brilliant solution.

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carapace
Airplane Park in San Francisco used to be a literal airplane. It was a F-8
Crusader jet with its guts scooped out.

[https://sfrecpark.org/project/larsen-park-jet-
playground/](https://sfrecpark.org/project/larsen-park-jet-playground/)

~~~
caf
Submarine park featuring a decommissioned submarine:

[https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/holbrook-
submarine](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/holbrook-submarine)

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dasKrokodil
Maybe we should start (or better return to) making the blades from wood.

[https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/wooden-wind-
turbines...](https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/wooden-wind-
turbines.html)

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zelon88
I know that material fatigues over time, but 225,000 tons of turbine blades
annually sounds excessive. Why so much waste?

Couldn't older ones be retro-fitted with newer rotating internal components to
extend the life of the structural components and the blades? I just can't see
such a massive structure being discarded just to be replaced with a unit which
is probably very similar.

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abathur
I posted separately a link to a YouTube profile of the architect. He mentions
later in the video that the blades are taken out of service when hairline
cracks are found in them.

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abathur
I was curious how the playground looked in use, a question well-answered by
this profile discussing the project that I found on YouTube:
[https://youtu.be/V4C4RQcyrSo](https://youtu.be/V4C4RQcyrSo)

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powerbroker
Wish we could do something similar with solar cells. Seems to me, that some
sections could be used to make streamlined coffins -- so you can slip into the
afterlife a little faster. Maybe a blade tip could be placed on a turret of a
ship, so as to generate a little extra push, in much the same way sails did a
century ago. I suppose that such material would make excellent berm material
when constructing levees. The list goes on...

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pjc50
Solar cells strike me as highly recycleable.
[https://www.veolia.com/en/newsroom/news/recycling-
photovolta...](https://www.veolia.com/en/newsroom/news/recycling-photovoltaic-
panels-circular-economy-france)

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Scoundreller
It looks nice and I can appreciate the story, but saying « discarded » makes
it sound like it has no value, but Scrap structural steel definitely does.

> designed the Wikado Playground to address the issue of saving out-of-service
> wind turbines from landfill.

Nononono.

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scblock
Wind turbine blades, such as those used on this playground, are typically not
recycled and have little scrap value. Their structure is primarily of
fiberglass, some with carbon fiber, often with foam and balsa wood as well.
There is some metal, typically in the lightning protection system (copper and
aluminum) and blade root (blade studs, covers, possibly a steel blade root
insert), but they do not comprise the majority of the structure. On
decommissioning it is relatively common for blades to be shredded and
landfilled.

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kaybe
I've just read some book proposing to make the blades out of natural fiber
materials such as bamboo. There seems to be quite a lot of research going on.

Edit: The article does indeed appear to talk about composite materials.

> According to research, there will be, at current growth rates, 225,000
> tonnes of rotor blade composite material produced annually worldwide

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TeMPOraL
> _> According to research, there will be, at current growth rates, 225,000
> tonnes of rotor blade composite material produced annually worldwide_

My heart hurts when I re-read this as "225,000 tonnes of rotor blade composite
material landfilled anually worldwide N years from now", N being the average
lifetime of a wind turbine.

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TheSpiceIsLife
Is that better or worse than the X tones of carbon emissions diverted?

Will any of the composite materials breakdown over time and leach in to water
supplies?

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TeMPOraL
For the problem of global warming itself, given positive EROI, it's better to
have those turbines and emit that less carbon. But for the problem of not
running out of resources, it may be worse.

In a way, under existing economic regime you can pretty much consider
renewables as non-renewable energy sources. A wind turbine doesn't burn non-
renewable fuel, but it does "burn" non-renewable construction materials. Of
course, climate change is the more pressing problem now, but I'm not 100% sure
_how much_ more pressing, given the exponents involved in all of this.

Most of all, just thinking about how even renewable energy is entirely
embedded in our process of transforming raw resources into waste (with a
little bit of economic value extracted in the middle) just breaks my heart.

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caf
_Most of all, just thinking about how even renewable energy is entirely
embedded in our process of transforming raw resources into waste (with a
little bit of economic value extracted in the middle)..._

This is really just the second law of thermodynamics making its presence felt
(not to imply that we're anywhere near close to some kind of entropic limit in
the construction of wind turbines, but as a rule of thumb: in the process of
doing useful work, things degrade).

