After years of research and trial runs, an Iowa recycling company has begun turning retired wind turbine blades into precast concrete products.
Renewablade, a Bondurant-based business founded by longtime recycler Brian Meng, is taking on a problem that has dogged the wind energy sector for years. Blades can stretch about 200 feet and do not fit landfills or standard waste streams with ease.
The company this year began full production at a facility in Earlham, where it processes the massive fiberglass blades into concrete retaining wall blocks, highway barriers and large agricultural bunkers. Meng said the effort is the result of several years of experimentation with grinding methods and concrete mixtures.
“There’s a lot of people that have said they were going to be able to do that,” Meng said. “We’re one of the rare companies that actually recycles them into a product.”
Meng, who has been in the industry since 1980, said he first became aware of the challenge several years ago. His background was in paper, plastic, aluminum and scrap metal. He was introduced to people in the concrete industry and began to consider whether blades could be processed into usable aggregate.
“Over probably a couple of years, we figured out, yes, you could,” he said. “Now we figured it out. What we have this year was our first year of production in Iowa.”
Fiberglass makes up most of a turbine blade, with resin and internal supports inside. Once cut down and ground, the material can be added to concrete in large amounts. Meng said the recycled mix is not meant for high-strength applications, but works well for the products the company is making.
“We’re not going to be building any superhighways with it,” he said. “We’re not going to be building skyscrapers with it. But certainly non-structural, precast concrete, I think it’s a great situation.”
The issue of abandoned blades has become contentious in recent years. Lawsuits in Iowa and other states followed incidents where companies accepted money to recycle blades but left them piled in fields or warehouses. A notorious site in Sweetwater, Texas drew scrutiny after thousands of blades sat in storage. Meng said such failures damaged public trust.
“They were good at collecting money, and then they just kind of packed up and went away,” he said. “That really got a lot of bad press.”
Transporting blades is another hurdle. A blade can be as long as the wingspan of a jumbo jet, which makes moves difficult and expensive. Renewablade has processed blades from as far away as Washington and Maine, but Meng said the economics work best when projects are closer to home. The company handled blades damaged in the 2024 tornado that struck Greenfield, Iowa.
Concrete production is a major source of global carbon emissions. Independent estimates put cement’s share at about 7% to 8% of global carbon dioxide. Meng said adding blade material into concrete at scale offers one way to reduce reliance on virgin resources while avoiding landfilling or burning blades in cement kilns.
“What we’re doing is much better than that program,” he said, referring to waste-to-energy methods that are sometimes promoted as recycling.
For now, Renewablade’s output is in the hundreds of blades each year, with ambitions to scale into the thousands. Meng said the challenge is not only sourcing the blades but also ensuring demand for the resulting concrete products. Concrete does not travel well, so production must align with local markets.
“We need to have somebody in that region that also wants the concrete products,” he said.
The company is in talks with partners in Texas and the UK. In Britain, interest centers on offshore wind farms, where blades move by ship and return to ports for decommissioning. Meng said port-based processing could allow recycled-blade concrete to be used nearby, including for coastal defense projects.
“We’re talking to a number of ports about being able to set up there and do that, and maybe even use the concrete for coastal defense type of things even around the port,” he said.
Renewablade does not hold a patent on its process, and Meng said it may not be possible to secure one. He likened the approach to a recipe that can be copied but requires expertise to scale.
“You know, anybody could say, well, I’ll throw some blade material in a bucket and see if it works,” he said. “But it totally took us a while to figure out.”
Despite early skepticism in Earlham, where some residents resisted the facility, Meng said the operation is now running and permitted for air and water controls. The company produces during warmer months, since Iowa winters are unsuitable for pouring concrete.
As renewable energy grows, end-of-life management for its infrastructure will take on more urgency. Meng said Renewablade is positioning itself as one of the few companies able to manage blades at scale.
“When you’re talking about that kind of scale, you can’t be building bike enclosures with them,” he said. “We can make an awful lot of concrete. There’s a lot of blades out there.”
A version of this story appeared in Resource Recycling on Sept 23.
