UK's renewable energy giant, GE’s renewable announced on Tuesday about its plan to manufacture zero waste wind turbine blades. By the year 2030, this will make it the latest operator to develop more sustainable production processes in the sector. The initiative is called ZEBRA, or Zero Waste Blade Research project, which aims to design and manufacture completely recyclable wind turbine blades.
The issue of where the end products of wind turbine blades end up when they’re used has been a major challenge for the industry. The composite materials that blades are made from can be difficult to recycle and end up in the landfill. To outsource its end products, its Denmark-based subsidiary LM Wind Power would “reuse, repurpose, recycle or recover all the extra materials from the manufacturing of blades and give up on incineration and landfilling as waste management solutions. Industry body WindEurope has vouched for a Europe-wide ban on landfills getting the end products of wind turbine blades, by 2025. Many other companies are working out their own solutions. Currently, nations everywhere are attempting to adopt a circular economy, which the EU has termed as a model of production and consumption, which includes sharing, reusing, leasing, refurbishing, repairing, and recycling products as long and as sustainably as possible. Wind energy is the first to adopt the idea of a circular economy. In November, Swedish battery firm Northvolt claimed to have produced its first battery cell with 100% recycled manganese, nickel and cobalt. They said that the cell’s nickel-cobalt- manganese cathode has been made using metals recovered with upcycled waste from batteries.
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Technology is a useful servant, but a dangerous master, it was rightly said. Electronic devices have grown into an inevitable part of our daily lives.
