The first generation of solar panels will wear out. A recycling industry is taking shape

K.C. Skillern moves material with a shovel from recycled solar panels at We Recycle Solar on Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in Yuma, Ariz. North Americas first utility-scale solar panel recycling plant opened to address what founders of the company call a tsunami of solar waste, as technology that became popular in the early 2000s rapidly scales up.

Workers maneuver the stacks into the sprawling 75,000 square foot facility on forklifts, then gently lift each out by hand to begin separating by brand and model. Some only have a few cracks in their glass, sometimes from storm damage. Some of the highest value materials are copper, silver, aluminum, glass, and crystalline silicon. Repurposing these means finding new uses for them, such as selling glass to companies that do sandblasting.

Copper is one metal the recycling yields, said Dwight Clark, director of compliance and recycling technology at We Recycle Solar, as others nearby sorted incoming panels. “Granted, it’s not a lot of pounds per solar panel. But when we do 10,000 pounds of solar panels an hour, we end up with a hundreds pounds of copper an hour coming out of it,” he said.

The European Union has rules that require recycling of electronic waste under its Waste Electrical and Electronic Waste Directive . The Yuma facility can process 7,500 panels in a single day or roughly 69 million pounds per year. As of early June, it estimates more than 650,000 tons of carbon dioxide have been avoided. It is reusing about 60% of the panels that come in.

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