As it turns out, wind energy may not be as eco-friendly as the environmentalists let on. Not only are they 24/7 bird-killing machines, they are also now piling up in landfills because they cannot be recycled.
“The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to end. The severed fragments look like bleached whale bones nestled against one another,” reports Bloomberg Green.
Even the disposing of a turbine blade expels tremendous energy, being that they have to be hauled away and must be sawed through with “a diamond-encrusted industrial saw to create three pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer.”
“Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills,” continued Bloomberg. “In the U.S. alone, about 8,000 will be removed in each of the next four years. Europe, which has been dealing with the problem longer, has about 3,800 coming down annually through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF. It’s going to get worse: Most were built more than a decade ago, when installations were less than a fifth of what they are now.” – READ MORE