San

Diego Launches Organics Recycling in a Big Way

San Diego, CA – San Diego has launched two major recycling efforts – a citywide organics waste collection program and plans for a massive $77 million composting plant, according to a San Diego Tribune report.

To comply with the state mandate for recycling yard and food waste, the city has distributed bins and kitchen pails to 250,000 residents. Next year, the region’s largest composting facility, the Miramar Greenery, will be replaced by an even bigger operation to accommodate the increased yard trimmings, food scraps and other organic material collected from residents and businesses in San Diego and surrounding communities.

The new facility is slated to be able to compost 250,000 tons of green waste per year — far more than the current 40,000-ton capacity of the greenery, which was built in the 1990s and expanded in 2009.

City officials say they expect to collect about 125,000 tons of green recycling materials per year once the city and the region are fully compliant with SB 1383. The state senate bill requires a 75% reduction in organic waste going to landfill by 2025.

Recycling Decommissioned Wind Turbine Blades

Cedar Rapids, IA – A factory is being built in a Cedar Rapids suburb to start recycling wind turbine blades into material that can be used for construction materials, reports Radio Iowa.

Wind turbine blades are typically 200 foot or longer, each weighing between eight and ten tons and having a 20-year lifespan. REGEN Fiber, owned by logistics company, Travero, will be processing them into sections, then transporting them to various locations around the country. The pieces then will be shred using giant woodchippers, a company official explained. Next they will be broken down to the basic fibers for use in making mortar and concrete to reinforce sidewalks, roads and floors. Even the balsa wood and foam inside the blades can be recycled into materials that have applications from cement finishing to soil stabilization.

Once the Fairfax factory is in full swing, the goal is to recycle more than 30,000 tons of shredded blade material every year.