Waste not, want not: What happens when the hardware behind Australia’s renewables revolution reaches the end of its life?

September 15th, 2025

It’s a sunny autumn morning and journalists, TV camera crews and influencers have gathered at Urbnsurf in Sydney Olympic Park – New South Wales’ only indoor surf park – to see the world’s first surfboards made from decommissioned wind-turbine blades.

At a glance, these are indistinguishable from your typical, run-of-the-mill surfboards, and there are pro surfers here taking them for a spin as they would any other board. But flip them over and you’ll find a small paragraph of text printed above the fins, detailing the amount of renewable energy the wind turbine once generated (14,773 megawatts per hour), the CO₂ emissions it offset (19,056 tonnes), and the coordinates of its former location (Victoria’s Waubra Wind Farm.)