The Daily Populous Monday November 1st, 2021 night edition
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crayfl on October 31st, 2021 at 12:46 UTC »

They're planting a wind farm!!!

xxMicroTechxx on October 31st, 2021 at 12:54 UTC »

Check link where this is and the rest of the story.

kingand4 on October 31st, 2021 at 13:49 UTC »

Another poster shared the original article, which is very well written and provides the critical missing context.

https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2020/02/05/wind-turbine-blades-cant-be-recycled-so-theyre-piling-up-in-landfills/

Give this guy an upvote: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/qjnwuk/a_bulldozer_burying_wind_turbine_blades/hirc5dk

> “Wind turbine blades at the end of their operational life are landfill-safe, unlike the waste from some other energy sources, and represent a small fraction of overall U.S. municipal solid waste,” according to an emailed statement from the group. It pointed to an Electric Power Research Institute study that estimates all blade waste through 2050 would equal roughly .015% of all the municipal solid waste going to landfills in 2015 alone.

It's crazy how much trash we make overall!

> 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. The company started producing samples at a plant in Sweetwater, Texas, near the continent’s largest concentration of wind farms. It plans another operation in Iowa.

> “We can process 99.9% of a blade and handle about 6,000 to 7,000 blades a year per plant,” said Chief Executive Officer Don Lilly. The company has accumulated an inventory of about one year’s worth of blades ready to be chopped up and recycled as demand increases, he said. “When we start to sell to more builders, we can take in a lot more of them. We’re just gearing up.”

So recycling the blades is not impossible, it's just new and just starting to become feasible.

> Landfill manager Cynthia Langston said the blades are much cleaner to store than discarded oil equipment and Casper is happy to take the thousand blades from three in-state wind farms...

That's a good reminder that the oil and gas industry also produces equipment waste that ends up in landfills, and that waste is worse because it's contaminated.

> While acknowledging that burying blades in perpetuity isn’t ideal, Bratvold, the special waste technician, was surprised by some of the negative reactions when a photo of some early deliveries went viral last summer. On social media, posters derided the inability to recycle something advertised as good for the planet, and offered suggestions of reusing them as links in a border wall or roofing for a homeless shelter.

> “The backlash was instant and uninformed,” Bratvold said. “Critics said they thought wind turbines were supposed to be good for the environment and how can it be sustainable if it ends up in a landfill?”

> “I think we’re doing the right thing.”