Vestas Wind Systems

A key challenge in the wind-power industry is what to do with composite fiberglass turbine blades once they’ve finished their useful life, since they cannot be recycled and are generally sent to landfills. To address this issue, global wind-turbine manufacturer and service provider Vestas created an initiative in 2021 with industrial and academic partners called the Circular Economy for Thermosets Epoxy Composites (CETEC). Through CETEC, Vestas developed a chemical process to break down epoxy-based blades into virgin-grade materials. By 2025, Vestas’s Blade Circularity Solution achieved a 94% rotor recyclability rate, which enabled the company to prevent thousands of tons of blade waste from entering landfills. Vestas’s goal is to produce zero-waste wind turbines by 2040.