• rumba@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 day ago

    wind turbine blades aren’t recyclable

    I didn’t even know about that.

    Wonder if they could crush them up and use them as concrete aggregate.

    • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 day ago

      “made mainly of carbon fiber, fiberglass, and balsa wood” from some random source. Doesn’t sound like anything particularly toxic or difficult to source. I can’t imagine putting them in landfill is a serious problem. So my response is “so what”.

      • rumba@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 day ago

        Why not?

        Carbon fiber and fiberglass in concrete foundations would limit microplastics and add strength to the product. Throwing a never-decomposing product into a landfill is just taking up space for something that can decompose over a couple of hundred years. Reuse it at least once it there’s a viable solution.

        • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 day ago

          Sure. I mean, you could. Probably there are better sources, like construction waste, that you’d want to exhaust first, but I obviously haven’t done a serious cost-benefit analysis, nor am I really qualified. My intuition is that you could do it but there are better uses of the time and money.

          Relatively inert stuff in a landfill doesn’t seem like the highest-priority use of the time and money. The resources used to scrap and recycle a wind turbine blade could probably be much better used for more consequential purposes.

          • TheOakTree@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 day ago

            I don’t like the idea of crushed fiberglass in landfills, but it’s far down the list of awful things we do to the planet. I think you’re correct in assuming the effort is better spent elsewhere.