Husband-and-wife team transform huge blades from wind turbines into everyday items

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A husband-and-wife team have solved the problem of what to do with the huge blades of wind turbines when they come to the end of their lifespan.Instead of letting them get chucked into storage or landfill because they can’t be recycled, Steven and Fiona Lindsay are seeing them transformed into everyday structures.So far, their company ReBlade has created bus shelters, park benches, canopies for electric car charging points, bike parks, play parks, walkways, garden sheds, tables and chairs.Steven said: “People might be amazed that you can turn a big turbine blade into something like a bus shelter or a place to park your bike.

But we have developed the technical expertise to do that.“Customers like the idea that we are putting these wind turbine blades to good use and giving them a second life.”Steven is a former three-times world sled dog champion and it was through that, which he did for more than 20 years, that he first became interested in the environment and green issues.The company is thought to be the first decommissioning service in Britain for the giant 60-metre blades, which the industry is struggling to recycle due to their construction from toughened fibreglass.The Lindsays, who have a base in Glasgow, remove the blades from the turbines by crane and transport them to their yard in Dumfries.They are cut into smaller pieces by “blade repurposing technicians” and converted into shelters and furniture.Most of the first wind farms, built in the late 1990s or early noughties, are now coming to the end of their shelf life.

Finding a solution for how to dispose of the turbine blades has become a major headache for the big power firms. Earlier this month the Sunday Mail told how old turbine blades from Scotland’s