Do we have so many of them that we are running out of dumping grounds? Are they made of rare, hard-to-obtain stuff? Are they toxic or otherwise dangerous?
I suppose all the answers to the above questions are negative. If so, let them pile up. We will recycle them as we learn an economical way to do that.
(For hundreds of millions of years, mollusks did not recycle their calcite shells. It had major ecological and even geological consequences. Now we have literal mountains of them. Has even it made Earth a worse place? Some old blades are nothing in comparison.)
> Using the new technology the glass or carbon fibre is separated from the resin and then chemicals further separate the resin into base materials, that are "similar to virgin materials" that can then be used for construction of new blades. Vestas said.
What are those chemicals and what happens to them after they are used?
I sort of read that area. It seems to be a trait of modern materials, which are often new and exciting composites that pose new and exciting challenges when they have to be taken apart for recycling.
New wind turbines use modern composites not because they're green, but because they're new. If you want a longer lighter blade for your wind turbine you use the latest strongest composite. If you want a thinner lighter doodah you do the same kind of thing, independent of whether that doodah has a greenish tinge or not.
Surely they can be repurposed? I’m thinking something architectural, like half-buried on the diagonal to create shade;
Or handrails on a pedestrian bridge.
It is: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb...
Should probably be: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb...
One little "q" to many at the end of the url