NI Firms Recycle Wind Turbine Blades Into Reusable Products
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- Plaswire Ltd, based in Lurgan, County Armagh, is recycling decommissioned wind turbine blades into a long-lasting reusable material used as an alternative to timber, virgin plastic, and precast concrete — for fence posts, transport pallets, and street furniture — with CEO Andrew Billingsley calling global blade waste a "colossal" problem at roughly 125,000 tonnes disposed of annually worldwide.
- ubloquity, founded by Kieran Kelly, attaches QR codes and RFID tags to recycled blades so anyone can scan a product with a phone and pull up its full supply-chain history — when it was made, where, by whom, and what it became.
- More than 400 turbines in Northern Ireland alone will need replacing over the next 15 years, with blade material currently heading almost entirely to landfill or incineration.
- Queen's University Belfast research proved turbine blades can be safely repurposed into bridges and other street furniture.
- The decommissioned Bellacorrick wind farm in County Mayo — Ireland's first commercial wind farm, opened in 1992 with 21 turbines generating 6.5MW — is being merged into the adjacent Oweninny wind farm, where 18 new larger turbines will each individually produce more power than the entire original site generated, lifting combined capacity to 220,000 homes and businesses.
Why it matters: With Europe's first-generation wind farms hitting the 25-year end-of-life mark, roughly 400 turbines in Northern Ireland alone and an estimated 125,000 tonnes of blades globally each year need disposal. Proving these composites can be recycled into certified, traceable products is essential to keeping the renewables industry itself green through its next major expansion phase.
