what if lab: upcycled turbines

landfills?! 

Discarded rotor blades from wind turbines are extremely difficult to recycle. Pulverisation is one option, but takes a lot of energy. For now, when the blades can no longer serve their purpose, a lot of them are buried. There are already a large number of discarded rotor blades on hand and that number will only increase in the near future. Vattenfall collaborated with Dutch Design Week's What If Lab to explore alternatives to recycling and ‘landfills’.

floating islands 

Rotor blades of wind turbines are meticulously tailored to catch wind high in the sky. Because of their complex construction of materials, recycling is not an obvious option. However, the large quantity of discarded blades creates perspective. The commitment is to leave the blades virtually intact in their new function. Partly through its experience with other circular projects, cepezed knows how much better this is, from a sustainability point of view. cepezed calculated that their length, light weight, sturdiness and hollow shape make the rotor blades suitable as floats. Several blades together can form a floating island, for housing, fields, greenhouses or solar parks, for example. Long, narrow islands can serve as roads.

test in ijsselmeer 

In October 2024, Vattenfall and cepezed tested a small island consisting of two floats in the Flevokust harbour near Lelystad. With encouraging results: they float high on the water and form a sturdy unit. All the more reason to test them further in other variations and on a larger scale.

The results of the What If Lab are exhibited at Dutch Design Week 2024. That the ‘lab’ was worthwhile is evident from the very different outcomes of cepezed, Superuse, Interactivist and Studio Carbon alone.