![](images/Logos/AP%20News.jpg)
August 01, 2023
BY ISABELLA O’MALLEY
The first generation of solar panels
will wear out. A recycling industry is taking shape
![](images/images_08_01_2023/pic1.jpg)
The largest solar panel recycling plant in North
America has opened in Yuma, Arizona just as the flow of used and spent
solar panels sharply ramps up. (Aug. 1) (AP Video by Thomas Machowicz/Produced
by Teresa de Miguel)
Sunlight beats down on a graveyard for dead solar
panels in Yuma, Arizona, hundreds stacked in neat piles, waiting for
their next life. The great majority of worn and damaged panels are
still dumped in landfills. But with more and more piling up, many
people know that needs to change.
In this desert city where Arizona, California, Sonora and Baja
California meet, North America’s first utility-scale solar panel
recycling plant has opened to address what founders of We Recycle
Solar call a “tsunami” of solar waste. Plans to address climate change
rely on massively scaling up clean, solar electricity.
The panels, stacked and banded, come here from the company’s main
collection warehouse in Hackettstown, New Jersey, plus six other
locations across the country.
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.
These can be reused, said Adam Saghei, CEO of We Recycle Solar, and
there is a market for them — clients around the world who search for
refurbished panels for their affordability. The Yuma facility, he
says, is like “your local thrift store that looks to upcycle.”
Some have been sold for example at the store Mercados Solar in
Carolina, Puerto Rico.
![](images/images_08_01_2023/download%20copy.jpg)
K.C. Skillern moves material with a shovel from
recycled solar panels at We Recycle Solar on Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in
Yuma, Ariz.
(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
![](images/images_08_01_2023/download%20(1)%20copy.jpg)
K.C. Skilern walks under a sorting machine as
solar panels are broken down and processed at We Recycle Solar on
Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in Yuma, Ariz. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
![](images/images_08_01_2023/download%20(2)%20copy.jpg)
Workers take apart solar panels as they begin the
recycling process at We Recycle Solar on Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in
Yuma, Ariz.
(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
![](images/images_08_01_2023/download%20(3)%20copy.jpg)
Dwight Clark inspects a used solar panel at We
Recycle Solar on Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in Yuma, Ariz. (AP
Photo/Gregory Bull)
Those that don’t go towards testing and resale
head down a conveyor belt where glass, metals, and other materials
with value are separated.
Solar panels are built to withstand decades of harsh weather, so it’s
difficult to break the resilient bonding that keeps them together.
Separating the glass without it shattering, for example, is a
challenge. But with robotic suction arms assisted by workers, they
come apart.
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.
![](images/images_08_01_2023/download%20(4)%20copy.jpg)
Workers feed solar panels onto a conveyer belt as
the panels are processed at We Recycle Solar on Tuesday, June 6, 2023,
in Yuma, Ariz.
(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
For Saghei, the inspiration for the company came
in 2017. He was working in the computer electronic waste sector,
seeing solar spread across warehouse roofs and wondering where it
would go eventually. He realized green technology doesn’t stay green
once it is decommissioned or retired.
“Solar energy is a great technology, but it can feed a whole industry
like aluminum and glass. Why are we spending tens of millions of
dollars on these materials from overseas when we can produce them
right here, right now?” he thought.
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 aluminum ... could come back as more solar panel frames or it
could go into the flight deck of a new Boeing aircraft.”
![](images/images_08_01_2023/download%20(5)%20copy.jpg)
Materials from solar panels make their way along
a sorting machine as the panels are recycled at We Recycle Solar on
Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in Yuma, Ariz. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
By 2050, solar waste will total some 78 million
tons globally, said Mool Gupta, a professor in the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Virginia. The
reason recycling and recovery isn’t robust yet, Gupta said, is that
companies struggle to justify the $30 per panel cost when it costs
only $1 to send it to a landfill.
If we hope to one day see 100% of retired solar recycled, said Garvin
Heath, distinguished member of the research staff at the Department of
Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, “Let’s not make it any
more expensive than what it would cost to landfill the module ...
let’s not have it cost the consumer anything and instead have it break
even for the recycler.”
Other companies are starting to get into the business.
Solarcycle, a startup based in Odessa, Texas, raised $30 million
earlier this year, led by Fifth Wall, an asset manager focused on
building decarbonization. And Solarpanelrecycling.com is an affiliate
of electronics recycler PowerHouse Recycling.
The European Union has rules that require recycling of electronic
waste under its Waste Electrical and Electronic Waste Directive (WEEE).
Market researcher Visiongain estimates the global market at US $138
million for last year and growing fast, boosted in part by incentives
offered in the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S.
As fast as possible, Jack Groppo, professor of mining engineering at
the University of Kentucky, says, people have to stop scrapping the
modules. “Once the solar panels go into the landfill, they’re gone
unless we go back and mine the landfill,” he said.
Groppo estimates that in 20 years people will mine landfills to
recover valuable materials in the junked panels, but “it makes an
awful lot more sense for us to separate them now.”
![](images/images_08_01_2023/download%20(6)%20copy.jpg)
Workers take apart solar panels as they begin the
recycling process at We Recycle Solar on Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in
Yuma, Ariz.
(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
![](images/images_08_01_2023/download%20(7)%20copy.jpg)
A sorting machine breaks down solar panels at We
Recycle Solar on Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in Yuma, Ariz. (AP
Photo/Gregory Bull)
![](images/images_08_01_2023/download%20(8)%20copy.jpg)
Workers take apart solar panels as they begin the
recycling process at We Recycle Solar on Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in
Yuma, Ariz.
(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
![](images/images_08_01_2023/download%20(9)%20copy.jpg)
A worker drives a fork lift near rows of used
solar panels as they begin the recycling process at We Recycle Solar
on Tuesday, June 6, 2023, in Yuma, Ariz. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
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.
The company plans to open another recycling facility alongside a large
solar manufacturer in the Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina
corridor.
For now, solar recycling companies are still figuring out how to make
money. We Recycle Solar sends out employees to dismantle large solar
arrays and that is currently its biggest source of revenue. Reselling
refurbished solar panels is number two, and recycling brings in the
least. Decommissioning and resale are actually subsidizing some of the
recycling costs, Saghei said.
But Gupta said these profitability challenges are temporary and will
be overcome. Researchers are hard at work on solving them, he said.
“Too many lives are lost to pollution and solar is one of the top
solutions.”
Thomas Machowicz, a freelance video
journalist for The Associated Press, contributed to this report from
Yuma, Arizona.
Associated Press climate and
environmental coverage receives support from several private
foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is
solely responsible for all content.
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