Recycling wind turbine blades is nearly impossible. Veolia North America thinks it can keep them out of landfills.

A bulldozer drives amid a pile of wind turbine pieces, which are piled on sandy ground — Piles of wind turbine blades at a waste management facility in Missouri.
Sam Paakkonen

Wind turbine blades are difficult to recycle because of their massive size and durable material.
One company is the first in the US to shred the blades so they can be used as fuel in cement-making.
Other researchers say the blades can be reused as bridges, cellphone towers, or fencing.

As America installs more wind turbines, a new waste problem is growing.

A worker kneels atop a massive wind turbine, and peers into the space between the base and the propeller. — Smithsonian/Getty Images

The massive blades have to be replaced every 20 years — and sometimes more often if they break or need upgrades.

A construction worker looks tiny relative to a wind turbine, which is laid flat on the ground receiving maintenance. — Smithsonian/Getty Images

And most of them end up in landfills.

Aerial view of used wind turbine blades stacked on the ground. The rows of blades extend out of frame on each side. — A pile of wind turbine blades in Louisiana, Missouri.
Sam Paakkonen

Wind energy is growing faster than any other type of renewable energy, according to 2021 data. But to reach net-zero emissions of planet-warming gases, global capacity still needs to double — which could mean a tsunami of turbine waste.

Stacked segments of wind turbine blades showing teardrop-shaped cross-sections with hollow, wooden-looking interior. — Sam Paakkonen

Source: International Energy Agency

Figuring out how to recycle it now could save a major headache down the road. Veolia — a waste, water, and energy management company — is trying to do just that.

Side view of a worker driving a yellow construction vehicle which is carrying a large wind turbine blade. — Sam Paakkonen

It gets the blades from GE Renewable Energy. They travel from all over the US to the town of Louisiana, Missouri.

Head-on view of a worker driving a yellow construction vehicle which is carrying a large wind turbine blade. — Sam Paakkonen

The first step is slicing them into smaller segments.

Two men use a circular saw to cut a large wind turbine blade into smaller segments. — Re-Wind

After being sliced into a more manageable size, the blades look like this.

A pile of sliced wind turbine blades which resemble planks of wood. — Sam Paakkonen

The next stop is this shredder. It's powerful enough to crush the 20-foot sections into pieces about the size of a football.

Construction machinery lowers a segment of a wind turbine into a shredding machine. — Sam Paakkonen

The chunks go to another shredder that grinds them down even more.

Inside a warehouse, an excavator lowers chunks of wood and fiberglass into a shredding machine. — Sam Paakkonen

Then a sorting machine filters out any remaining large pieces.

Closeup of red machinery outputting ground sawdust-like material. — Sam Paakkonen

The final product looks like this.

Closeup of two hands holding brown shredded material. — Sam Pakkonoen

Right now, GE pays Veolia to recycle the blades, and Veolia pays to send the final product to cement factories.

A factory emits a plume of emissions near a row of houses. — A cement plant in Lägerdorf, Germany.
picture alliance/Getty Images

But most of the cement industry's emissions come from heating limestone in kilns, so this process probably won't make much of a dent.

Balls of clay inside a furnace with glowing red flames in the background. — A furnace used in industrial cement production.
Artur Osypian/Getty Images

Cement factories burn the turbine blades for fuel — replacing some of the coal the factories usually use. Veolia says its product burns cleaner.

Veolia says the main benefit of shredding and burning giant turbine blades is keeping them out of landfills.

Six rows of white wind turbine blades neatly stacked on the ground. — Sam Pakkonen

Some researchers say reusing the blades would be better — like Larry Banks, whose team at Re-Wind is using one to build a pedestrian bridge in Ireland.

A bridge with pedestrians walking on it stretches across a blue channel of water. — Re-Wind

They have proposals to turn wind turbines into cellphone towers and fencing, too.

A mockup of a wind turbine being repurposd as a cell phone tower and as fencing. — Re-Wind

Re-Wind isn't alone in looking for creative ways to reuse turbines. Architects in the Netherlands turned old blades into a playground.

Pieces of wind turbine blades being reused on a playground as benches, a table, and posts connecting a net. — Denis Guzzo

Another company in Denmark, called Siemens Gamesa, created a bike shed.

A section of a wind turbine provides shade a rack full of bikes. — Siemens Gamesa

These reuse-focused solutions probably can't take on the scale of the waste that's coming.

Wind turbine blades piled up outdoors on sandy ground. — Sam Pakkonen

There are already more than 70,000 turbines in the US, according to the US Wind Turbine Database.

And with plans to expand offshore wind, the US could have 2,000 more within the next decade, Reuters reported.

On a global scale, a 2017 study predicts global waste from turbine blades will exceed 47 million tons by 2050.

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