Wind Simplicity receives ISRI Design for Recycling Award

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc. (ISRI) announced that a manufacturer of recyclable small wind turbines has been selected as the fifth annual winner of ISRI’s Design for Recycling® Award (DfR).

Wind Simplicity was founded in 2004 by Alfred Mathieu, PhD, and Sharolyn Vettese, BA. The Canadian father–daughter team has succeeded in revolutionizing the design of wind turbines, making pollution-free, cost-free wind energy a practical onsite alternative.

ISRI is the force behind Design for Recycling, a voluntary program that urges manufacturers to make products that can be recycled from the start. Such design benefits not only the environment, but the economy as well as shareholders and consumers recognize the benefits of designing a product that will have several lives.

“Design engineers have a tough job in balancing safety, energy efficiency and cost with the consumer’s passion for the latest and greatest technology. Too often, it seems that design engineers rarely get to the point of thinking about what will happen to the product at the end of its useful life,” Robin Wiener, ISRI president, said. “Good intentions aside, it seems most people don’t give much thought to what happens to a product when it has reached the end of life. However, as time goes by and new materials and technologies are developed, the challenge that recyclers face in safely and economically recycling those products grows ever more difficult.”

To address these challenges, ISRI created the concept of Design for Recycling to help protect the environment and create a sustainable means for conserving natural resources. Design for Recycling seeks to achieve two very basic goals: first, to eliminate or reduce the use of hazardous or toxic materials that may present a grave danger to the environment or put a recycler’s workforce in jeopardy, and second, to discourage the use of materials that are not recyclable or manufacturing techniques that make a product non-recyclable using current technologies.

“Wind Simplicity demonstrated great creativity in incorporating DfR criteria into the manufacturing processes, thereby making their wind turbine completely recyclable,” said Manny Bodner, chair of the ISRI task force on DfR.