Did you know that wind turbines have a life of 20-25 years before becoming inefficient due to damage? So what happens after their use? they often end up in landfills. Hardly the ‘sustainable’ solution you’d expect.
You might not know this, but wind energy is currently the leading sustainable energy source in the US, providing approximately 8% of the energy in the United States. That’s 337.5 terawatt-hours of wind electricity! While this is great news for sustainable energy advocates, it is clear that something must be done about “their massive, glass or carbon fiber-reinforced blades [that] end up in landfills”. “Recycling wind turbine blades should be a no brainer”, says Interesting Engineering.
This is exactly what a company called ‘Re-Wind Network’ sets out to achieve. The engineers involved in this project emphasised that the annual “global FRP blade waste is expected to reach 40 million tonnes by 2050”. So they came up with innovative solutions to re-use these materials. Last October, the Re-Wind Network grew popular for recycling wind turbine blades to build bike shelters in Denmark. Now the company makes the headlines once again, for their innovative bridge, using the same technique, in Ireland.
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