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The Minister for Energy and Clean Economy Jobs at Queensland Government, Mick de Brenni was seen wearing a pair of ACCIONA x Elganso wind sneakers on stage at an event in Brisbane.
Sharing a post on his LinkedIn reading
"Seriously.
These are the first shoes made with a recycled wind turbine blade sole.
Around 90% of a wind turbine is recyclable, and this pair uses material from a blade that has generated clean energy for decades.
A strong end of life plan for renewables is essential.
In Queensland, we’re taking our first steps with an Australian first solar panel recycling pilot.
Ensuring thousands of residential solar panels will avoid landfill."
Responding to future challenges now ACCIONA Energia in Australia is starting to investigate and explore new recycling opportunities for turbine blades and develop solutions before early generations of wind farms start to reach their retirement age.
While ACCIONA Energia has been developing commercially viable industrial uses for recycled turbine blades for several years this is the first time it has developed consumer focused solutions.
The ‘ACCIONA x El Ganso’ footwear were manufactured using a 23-metre-long blade from the Aibar Wind Farm in Navarra, which has been operating since 1998. During its operational lifetime, the blade captured wind used to generate 12,500MWh of clean energy, which avoided the emission of 5,461 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The shoes’ soles have been manufactured using materials from dismantled wind turbine blades that have undergone a micronizing process. This groundbreaking proprietary technique consists of reducing the size of fiberglass and epoxy resins to microns, through an advanced mechanical transformation process. The resulting powder is combined with rubber to produce a shoe sole that maintains the strength, grip and durability of conventional shoes made using virgin materials.