
Wind turbine blades can’t be recycled, so they’re piling up in landfills - melling
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills
======
8bitsrule
That '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...'

~~~
tinus_hn
It’s just another excuses in the line that also has the ‘its bad for birds’
one.

~~~
8bitsrule
Whereas shooting passenger-pigeons for fun and profit was _just fine_.

But, then, scraping the bottom-of-the-barrel has been _in_ for the past 3.

------
gibolt
This 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.

~~~
etrautmann
It seems like this is a completely manageable amount of safe physical waste to
bury.

I am curious, however, about the lifecycle analysis for the blades and the
energy and emissions that go into producing them. One would think that they
could be repaired somewhat indefinitely, but perhaps this is naive.

~~~
eru
You can't really repair big fibreglass pieces, I suspect.

So you could probably keep the steel tower and put new blades on it (and
repair/replace the generators etc), but the blade probably has to be replaced
as one.

------
scblock
It 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.

------
kube-system
Seems 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
Waste 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
A turbine blade that hasn't been burned releases even fewer emissions.

~~~
jascii
Airborne emissions maybe, the eventual mechanical breakdown of plastics will
deposit microplastics into our water systems.

------
sk0g
I 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
My 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
Seems 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
Aeroplane 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.

~~~
sk0g
Fair enough, the article stated as much too. Would they be completely
worthless in a turbine setting, even if they were free?

~~~
ben7799
For one thing turbine blades have to deal with high temperatures.

They're not really the same thing at all.

~~~
DonHopkins
That's why windmills are so carcinogenic. ;(

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_syndrome)

~~~
nicktelford
> The distribution of recorded events, however, correlates with media coverage
> of wind farm syndrome itself, and not with the presence or absence of wind
> farms. Neither term is recognised by any international disease
> classification system, nor do they appear in any title or abstract in the
> United States National Library of Medicine's PubMed database. Wind turbine
> syndrome has been characterized as pseudoscience.

I really expect better of HN.

------
imtringued
Hating 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.

~~~
stallmanite
I feel the same way. Landfills will be very convenient places to mine in the
future.

~~~
beerandt
They 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.

------
UI_at_80x24
FUD 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
Coal 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-n...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/next-generation-
nuclear/)

Perhaps we can use more hydrogen in our future:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2020/01/09/hydrogen...](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)

~~~
jfengel
In 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
This 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.

~~~
jfengel
My understanding is that the targets of this resent social safety nets. They
view them as demeaning, especially since they are capable of work. But the
only work traditionally available in the region is coal mining, and that won't
be fixed by retraining. So they see the coal, and the ability to work, and
grow resentful that they are forbidden from putting these two things together.

They are also attached to the places, and do not wish to leave. Retraining for
new jobs in cities, or even different rural areas, means leaving longstanding
family homes.

I need to note that I'm not an expert. I'm speaking here thirdhand at best.
But I'll note that in the last Presidential election, when asked to choose
between a candidate who promised retraining and social safety nets versus one
who promised to re-open the coal mines, they overwhelmingly chose the latter.

~~~
perl4ever
"They are also attached to the places, and do not wish to leave"

That's kind of a distorted way to look at it. People _do_ leave, and then they
aren't included in the population that's under the microscope. So the
remainder is always being distilled down, no matter how bad things get, until
the outside world decides they can be ignored. Same thing with farmers in the
20th century.

------
jimrandomh
I 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
Seems like something that could eventually be used by wildlife, too.
Drastically improved from extraction and emission.

------
protonimitate
Genuine 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
Land 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.

------
2038AD
Low Tech Magazine has some articles on using wood to make more sustainable
turbines

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

------
AtlasBarfed
This 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.

------
BitwiseFool
Why not sink them and make artificial reefs?

~~~
dbcurtis
Interesting 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.

------
trenning
Could 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)

------
malkia
Imagine a fort built out of them!

~~~
DonHopkins
Or a Bjork music video!

------
chaz6
Fibreglass 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-
composite...](https://www.compositesworld.com/blog/post/recycled-composites-
from-wind-turbine-blades-used-for-cement-co-processing)

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/olTU8](https://archive.md/olTU8)

------
Gys
Someone 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?

~~~
imtringued
If that were true then you would expect countries with wind turbines to
produce more CO2 emissions than countries that didn't.

~~~
stallmanite
Only if they’re being manufactured in the country where they’re used.

------
lancewiggs
There 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.

------
theklub
I feel like you could def recycle them, at the very least cut them up/reshape
them into smaller turbine blades.

------
kumarvvr
I 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.

------
pauljurczak
Build a section of The Great Southern Wall with them? ;-)

------
ben7799
This 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.

------
vernie
Damn, back to coal I guess.

------
clSTophEjUdRanu
This 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.

~~~
hristov
No 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.

~~~
keanzu
> 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.

Seems like you are talking about high-level waste (HLW) which is just 0.2% [1]
of all radioactive waste by volume.

The cooling you are referring to is a passive cooling pond [2], there's no
active cooling. There are no radioactive gases escaping from the spent fuel -
not small or massive amounts. Spent nuclear fuel is a solid. Liquid waste is
from weapons programs, not power generation.

[1] [https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-
fu...](https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-
cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-wastes-myths-and-realities.aspx)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool)

Is radioactive fuel wildly more difficult and dangerous to manage than a few
thousand inert turbine blades? Absolutely.

