By Coco Liu, Bloomberg
At first glance, the benches outside the Great Lakes Science Center in downtown Cleveland seem unremarkable. But a closer inspection shows that their droplet-shaped shells aren’t made from wood or metal. A scan of the attached QR codes reveals even more: These benches used to be wind turbine blades.
Painted by local artists and weighing in at about 500 pounds (230 kilograms) apiece, the benches were crafted by Rocky River, Ohio-based Canvus, which will install 10 more in the same location later this month. Altogether, the dozen benches reuse roughly a quarter of a single 150-foot (45-meter) wind turbine blade.
“We give this material a second life,” says Parker Kowalski, co-founder and managing director at Canvus.
Many more blades will soon need second lives of their own, as wind turbines installed in the early 2000s start to reach the end of their lifespan. By 2025, the trade association WindEurope estimates that 25,000 metric tons of wind turbine blades will be phased out each year in Europe alone, equivalent to the weight of more than 6,000 Hummer SUVs. Turbine manufacturers are working on making their blades recyclable, but for now, startups like Canvus offer a more immediate fix: repurposing them into new products.
At the end of a wind turbine’s life cycle, roughly 85% of its components — including the steel tower, copper wire, and gearing — can be recycled through established metal processing. But turbine blades are a more intractable challenge. Coated with epoxy resins, they cannot easily be crushed. Blades are also made primarily from fiberglass and lack the metals and minerals that attract recyclers.
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