Claim: Wind energy is "a con" and not truly green, as wind turbines aren't properly recycled, this social media user said in a post on X, sharing a photo of a bulldozer burying what looks to be parts of windmills.

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DW Fact check: Misleading The photo is real and was published 2020 in a Bloomberg report showing wind turbines in the ground at the Casper Regional Landfill in Wyoming. It's also available on the stock photo service Getty Images. There are other sites of such wind turbine graveyards in the US, for instance in Iowa and South Dakota, where wind turbine blades are chopped up and buried. At the moment, about 90% of the mass of a decommissioned wind turbine can be recycled, according to the US Department of Energy.Some renewable energy companies say they recycle up to 95% and have committed to stop sending turbine blades to landfill. Germany, Austria, Finland and the Netherlands already have a landfill ban in place. And the European wind industry, represented by WindEurope, is calling for a Europe-wide landfill ban on decommissioned wind turbine blades by 2025. Steel towers, concrete foundations and copper cables are relatively easy to recycle, according to the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems (IWES) — but since rotor blades are made of different materials, recycling these parts was much more complex. Even though some of the blades are being repurposed and used as playground equipment, bicycle shelters or material for skis, "the usual disposal method is currently thermal recycling of the shredded rotor blades in the cement industry," Fraunhofer said. Next-generation rotor blades are recyclable with a new type of resin that allows for the separation of composite materials so they can be reused.

Reviewed by Deutsche Welle ↗ · June 7, 2025