Dump wind parts

Follow up to "Wind blade" posts

Wind turbine parts (photo) are made of stuff that's hard to recycle, fiberglass especially. Turbines fail after 10-20 years and have to be discarded. What to do with them is the big question.

Global Fiberglass Solutions claims to have the solution. Wind energy firms contract with them to do the big job of recycling these massive parts. But are they doing it?

Texas says, No. Their lawsuit claims that GFS has dumped about 3,000 blades at two sites, for a total of about 487,000 square yards of solid waste. 

Recycling facilities have to process at least 75% of the material they take in according to Texas law. The state says GFS has never met that requirement since 2017, so

Looks like the big problem of what to do with huge old wind turbine parts is still unsolved. Meanwhile, they pile up in big fields and disposal sites, sheltering rattlesnakes and mosquitos. Local people don't like that. These things are huge.

from "Green Energy Firm Sued for Allegedly Turning State into Wind Turbine Waste Dumping Ground"

E-waste 1

When you get a new phone, where does the old one go? How about tv's and laptops? Over a billion phones were manufactured in 2024. Where are the ones they replaced?

We suppose they're getting re-cycled somehow. Some do, around 22% of them. It's a market niche that some companies have jumped into. SK Tes, one of those, operates at a global level to process "IT assets" discarded by organizations. At 40 facilities around the world, they re-purpose over 3 million annually; that's hundreds of millions of pounds of electronics.

The other 78% of throw-away technology is dumped or unsafely "processed."

Just the sheer volume is a global problem. Much of it ends up in burning piles in southeast Asia and Africa. Serious pollution results in health risks such as cancer, while 80% of the children in the capitol of Ghana have lead poisoning.

from The Next Web

Wind blades 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

About 3,000 wind turbines have been built in the U.S. each year since 2005. At three blades each over twenty years, that's roughly 180,000 blades so far. 

They're supposed to last 20+ years but are often done in ten years or less. What happens then? Going to landfills around the world, as they do now, is not a sustainable future.

Fiberglass, their main component, is very difficult to break down for recycling. Veolia started making the blades into a product that the cement industry can use, and which can strengthen their end product. 

Beyond that, Canvus is making outdoor furniture out of "fillets" of enormous blades. But they can only do that with about half the blades sent to them. The rest are either too damaged or just too huge. 

To be considered green and sustainable, wind power will have to come up with better solutions for wind blades at the end of their usable life. 

Garbage tower 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

"On a recent day, trucks rumbled up a steep dirt road to the top of the garbage pile, where crows blotted out the sun and wind kicked up fumes from moldy vegetables and feces discarded in saggy plastic bags.

"Down below, Faiyaz Khan, the owner of a dairy plot, said this patch of land was once dense forest, perfect for his buffalo. He wondered what his future would hold.

“The height of the dump keeps increasing and my health keeps decreasing,” said Mr. Khan.

"Something as simple as installing trash cans around Delhi has not been done, partly because garbage collection is not guaranteed and many residents are used to simply flinging trash onto the ground.

“You don’t know whether the public will even use them,” said Mr. Annepu, founder of a waste management non-profit. Cultural change doesn't come easy.

photo

Garbage tower 1

India's garbage problem has not been solved since the last time we took a look at it.
There have been attempts to solve it. Prime Minister Modi's party started "Clean India Mission" in 2014. People who don't separate their trash for recycling are subject to fines. One company is making mulch out of the trash.

But there are multiple hurdles to overcome. Designating new dumps faces opposition from residents. "A few hundred thousand ragpickers" live in nearby slums, picking plastic out of the dumps to sell, and they may not vote for politicians who threaten their livelihood.

photo

Four official dumps in the Delhi metro contain about 80 billion pounds. They're getting so big that air traffic controllers may have to start steering planes around them.

During a monsoon rain, part of the dump crashed and two people were killed.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Discarded

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

All that manufactured stuff is eventually discarded and it's a lot of trash. As an example, "The average person in the United States throws away their body weight in rubbish every month." Some expect that the amount of solid waste generated globally will triple by the year 2100.

"A city resident generates twice as much waste as their rural counterpart of the same affluence." So one reason that global waste is rising fast is just the fact that more and more people live in cities all over the world. Think of China, where the government is aggressively moving millions upon millions of people from their rural homes to cities - and in some cases building those cities from scratch.

photo: wikipedia.com

But there are good reasons to expect that earth won't get buried in waste despite growing urbanization. 

Wealthier cities of the world deal with waste much more efficiently than poorer cities. It makes sense. In very simple terms, people use their material resources to meet their survival needs, and then at some point they can turn their energies to priorities lower on the list.

Just one more benefit - among so many - that accrues to a poorer nation when they start to create their own wealth beyond survival.

All our stuff

This post is for anyone who's ever wondered how much human-made stuff there is on the earth, and how it compares to the natural world.

To sum it up, there's more stuff - in both mass and in variety - manufactured by humans.

The stuff we've made amounts to "30 trillion metric tons . .  about 50 kilograms for every square meter of Earth’s surface."

And it all weighs much more than the combined weight of all humans: "Human-made things are 60,000 times as heavy as humans themselves."

photo: sciencenews.org

Re-gen village

Off-the-grid, is it really possible? Could be the energy grid or the food grid or some other grid, or all of the above. But some inventors and designers are giving serious thought as to how to accomplish living without dependence on public or government-provided necessities.

Regen Villages has a vision to engineer and facilitate "the development of integrated and resilient neighborhoods that power and feed self-reliant families around the world."

"In ReGen villages, household food waste is composted and fed to flies, which in turn feeds fish, which then fertilizes aquaponic gardens (multi-layered systems that combine fish farming and hydroponic agriculture, with plant roots submerged in nutrient-rich solution rather than soil). Those aquaponic farms grow produce for residents to eat, as do seasonal gardens, which are be fertilized by waste from livestock raised to feed residents. Rainwater is harvested and filtered for use in the farms and gardens, and on-site solar panels power the homes."