The cemetery contains 4,000 giant wind turbine blades in the US

Without effective recycling measures, wind turbine blades after the end of a 25-year operating cycle become a new threat to the environment.

Across the street from the town cemetery in Sweetwater, Texas, is another graveyard. Here, about 4,000 used giant wind turbine blades are piled up, occupying most of the area of ​​​​a field of about 10.1 hectares, Mail on February 27 reported.

With no efficient way to recycle, old wind turbine blades pile up in Sweetwater.

Wind turbine blades can be longer than the wings of a Boeing 747 - more than 90m - and weigh up to 8 tons, so they should be sawed into three pieces. They are still very large, although they are increasingly covered by weeds. They've been here for five years and will almost certainly continue to be around for many more years.

Giant white wind turbines are springing up more and more on land and sea, providing renewable energy to the world. However, they come with a hidden environmental cost that is rarely mentioned: they are not permanent. In fact, wind turbines only work for 20-25 years. Besides, the propellers are made from fiberglass and plastic to withstand hurricane winds but still light enough to spin. They are not easily crushed, making recycling even more difficult.

Scientists are looking for ways to separate the plastic from the fiberglass or grind the propeller into small pieces that can be used in other products. However, they encountered many difficulties when they wanted to find a method that was feasible on a large scale.

Experts predict that by 2050, the world will throw away two million tons of wind turbine blades each year. In the UK, this volume has exceeded 100,000 tons per year. Currently, old propellers are mostly buried in landfills and will take centuries to decompose.

Handling the old turbine blades is expected to become increasingly difficult. The number of propellers at the end of their life will skyrocket as those built during the wind boom (the 1990s and 2000s) falter. Meanwhile, turbine blades are getting longer and longer to improve efficiency, which means more and more waste.

Scientists at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory warn that in the next few decades, the world will face a "wave" of waste propellers amounting to hundreds of thousands or even more. Used wind turbine blades don't release toxins into the soil, but they take up a lot of space in overcrowded landfills.

Wind turbine blades can be longer than the wings of a Boeing 747 - more than 90m - and weigh up to 8 tons, so they should be sawed into three pieces.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that if offshore wind farms were built in every possible location, they could generate more electricity than the world needs.

Nolan County, Texas, is home to the largest concentration of wind turbines in the United States. Meanwhile, the US is the second largest wind energy producer in the world after China. Of the 180,000 wind turbines in operation in the US, a quarter are located in Texas. The western part of the state is generally flat and windy - good conditions for turbines.

Sweetwater, the capital of Nolan, once focused on developing wind energy, even using turbine blades as welcome signs on the main road. But now, this place has a giant wind turbine graveyard. The propellers are owned by Global Fiberglass Solutions, an American recycling company. For various reasons, recycling has not yet been implemented effectively.

In densely populated England, it is not acceptable to dispose of thousands of old turbine blades as arbitrarily as Sweetwater. Instead, most of the 100,000 tons of turbine blades that are discarded each year will end up in landfills. Europe strictly limits what can be buried in this way, so some propellers are burned in special factories or pyrolysis furnaces to create products such as glue or paint. But the process requires a lot of energy, and the burning of fiberglass also produces pollutants.

In November, a three-year project with a £2 million grant to develop research by the University of Strathclyde was announced. The goal of the project is to recycle wind turbine blade components for use in the automotive and construction industries. In Denmark and Ireland, propellers are used as bridges and bicycle parking. While in the Netherlands they are used as slides and ramps for children. However, this is still only a small part of the giant propellers that the world is about to throw away.