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In 2022, Change Inc. wrote about Blade-Made, a start-up that uses discarded wind turbine blades as building blocks for infrastructure, playgrounds and street furniture. Because blades are difficult to recycle, the Rotterdam-based company is trying to provide a creative solution to the growing mountain of wind turbine waste. By now, we are about two years down the road. How is Blade-Made doing now?

The team behind Blade-Made, with from left to right: Jan Willem de Laive, Jos de Krieger and Tonny Wormer. | Credit: Blade-Made

They remain striking apparitions, Blade-Made's creations. Seen from above, it looks like pieces of windmill have fallen from the sky, in reality they are carefully designed benches, slides, geographical markers and climbing walls. All from windmill blades that otherwise would have ended up on the scrap heap. It's a useful use for a waste stream that's only going to increase, as well as a way to reduce carbon emissions from other construction projects.

Steward ownership

In 2022, the start-up was still part of Rotterdam-based architecture collective Superuse Studios. Now the company stands on its own feet, choosing the legal form of steward ownership. This means that the company is not owned by shareholders but by a foundation, putting the focus on the moral ambition of the company. Management plunges fully into that ambition and is not driven by financial incentives.

"After all, Blade-Made's mission is bigger than us," Jos de Krieger, also an architect and partner at Superuse Studios, justifies his choice. "We started reusing wind turbine blades because we saw that this challenge was not being taken up by the market by itself. But my ambition is not to still be a Blade-Made director 25 years from now. We want to ensure that others will take over the leadership in a while, without abandoning the mission. Maybe then I'll still be involved as a steward in the foundation."

One hundred percent

The mission De Krieger talks about is crystal clear to him: reuse one hundred percent of the discarded wind turbine blades. Right, all of them. An ambitious, but in his opinion very necessary goal. "Right now the recycling capacity is still insufficient. Steps are being taken, but the process is still very energy intensive and produces a relatively low-quality product. In addition, as a society we also have a space and materials problem. If we can make high-quality products from wind turbines, which we try to preserve as much as possible in their original form, the recycling industry can continue to innovate. And we contribute with our projects in these other areas as well."

In 2022, Blade-Made was still primarily concerned with public playground equipment and seating. And such projects have not yet disappeared from the start-up's portfolio. For example, Blade-Made is now working with construction company Beens on the Bleekerseiland for the municipality of Meppel, upgrading two to five old windmill blades into seating areas along flowerbeds. But Blade-Made has also since broadened its focus. For example, it plans to focus on larger projects, including noise barriers along highways and bridges. One such bridge may already be coming to Bleeker Island.

"For noise barriers, we already had the concepts in place. We are working together with Dura Vermeer Infra on a test setup, and have been assigned a location by the Department of Public Works to do so. Actually, building a noise barrier is not that exciting. If it's high enough, it stops noise. We can build a prototype in two to three months. This is mainly to demonstrate that a noise barrier is scalable and feasible. Then we can prove to the larger projects that it doesn't suddenly become twice as expensive. After all, that is the thorny issue in construction."

Technically feasible

"For building bridges in the Netherlands, we are still one step earlier in the process. In Denmark, however, we have already designed a complete bridge and are waiting for approval from the municipality. So that it is technically feasible, I have no doubt about that. Whether it is financially feasible, that depends on what people are willing to pay for a special bridge that can deliver sustainability gains."

Currently, Blade-Made is seeking funding. Not only to make the projects themselves more financially attractive by implementing more standardization, but also to better accommodate the swelling influx of wind turbine blades. "We've had discussions with investors, but haven't been able to get anything official in yet. So we are working on that now. With the money we can, for example, set up a yard to store and process blades. We really need something like that to scale up. But we still find the financing difficult. For one investor we come too early, for another we fall just outside the scope. Impact investment is a new world for us and we are not yet a household name. Potential customers do know where to find us, we just haven't found the most suitable investor yet."

Knowledge and budget needed

On top of that, the influx of wind turbines can create challenging situations. "We cannot behave like a linear company that has a constant and reliable supply of raw materials that all look the same. With us, we may have made a design based on a 20-meter blade, but be supplied with a 23-meter blade made by another manufacturer. Then that design has to be redone. Now I expect that will have to happen less and less as we do more projects. But as long as we haven't been able to do a project three times, we will continue to run into that. We just need knowledge and budget."

On the demand side, on the other hand, De Krieger experiences no shortage. Although he calls the number of applications in the Netherlands "still somewhat modest," abroad it is a different story. "A developer in Germany, a company in Austria, various parties in France, we are approached by everywhere. The tricky thing is that we still have to build the whole chain in those countries. After all, we have no ambition to start producing in the Netherlands for the Austrian market, for example. Then we would miss the mark. So we have to look for local partners. So these are actually the same steps that we have carried out in the Netherlands over the past two years."

Customization

With a wind turbine blade as a building block, you can soon let your imagination run wild. What else can you make with it? But for Blade-Made, it is really the mission - to reuse all old windmill blades - that takes precedence. "Ultimately, I don't think the outlet is the most important thing," De Krieger explains. "If we can use all the discarded blades for noise barriers and playgrounds, I'm totally fine with that. I think some of the projects will always be custom-made. That's nice too, we can take pleasure in that as an architectural firm. But the power is really in the repetition."

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