It's both challenging and crucial to recycle wind turbine blades, because those massive fins are built to weather the elements for decades and don't degrade quickly in landfills. An Australian company might have just hit upon the most radical solution so far: it's turning those old blades into surfboards.
Draft Surf has recently been crafting the decks of surfboards using strips of repurposed turbine blades out on the Gold Coast. They're fitted with fiberglass fins for added stability and speed, and then the outer shell uses particulate material from the blades to increase strength.
The company, founded by professional surfer Josh Kerr, has already made 10 such surfboards out of 12-foot (3.6-m)-long, 660-lb (300-kg) pieces of decommissioned blades. That's a departure from its usual process, in which it uses either polyurethane or epoxy to craft boards over the course of several weeks each. Prices for those typically start at around US$700 and go over $1,000.
The blades came from energy company Acciona's wind farm in the town of Waubra, Victoria. It's quite the symbiotic partnership, since it offers Draft a way to differentiate its offerings, and gives Acciona a way to responsibly dispose of blades that can't be recycled as easily as PET bottles. The firm operates more than 6,500 turbines across several wind energy facilities in Australia and other countries.
Wind turbine blades have previously been turned into asphalt for roads, decking materials, the raw ingredients for 3D printing filaments, and park benches and playground equipment. Acciona has also worked with Spanish apparel brand El Ganso to use recycled fiberglass from the blades in the soles of sneakers.
Now, it's hard to imagine that Draft Surf's initiative alone will make a huge dent in the estimated 800,000 tons of turbine blades dropped into landfills each year. But the more applications we can find for decommissioned blades, the easier it becomes to spread out the incoming supply before they're otherwise just discarded. Bonus points if these initiatives are local, because that reduces the cost and carbon footprint of transporting these enormous components to their final destination.
Source: Acciona
