TRANSCRIPT
Stacks of solar panels cover a yard in Arizona. The aim - to recycle them and prevent them from being dumped in landfills.
The solar panel plant, also known as 'We Recycle Solar', can process roughly 69 million kilograms of modules every year.
'We Recycle Solar' CEO Adam Saghei says recycling solar is important.
“As solar is a great technology, it is now becoming more and more accessible to everyone, there was no planning for end of life. And with secondary markets, with US’s supply chain woes, we knew we could find a way to take those raw materials and these assets and give them new life.”
The panels come from a main collection warehouse in Hackettstown, New Jersey, plus six other locations across the United States.
Workers manoeuvre the stacks into the sprawling 75,000 square foot facility on forklifts.
Some only have a few cracks in their glass, sometimes from storm damage.
Mr Saghei says many of the recycled solar panels can be re-used.
“We don't want to go to the landfill. That's the last thing that we want to do. There's still life left in them. They're 25 to 30 years. At the end of the day, someone else's trash is someone else's treasure. That we're able to refurbish and re-market that and get it to a place where an underserved community can take advantage of that.”
Those that don't go towards testing and resale, head down a conveyor belt where glass, metals and other materials with value are separated.
Some of the highest value materials are copper, silver, aluminium, glass and crystalline silicon.
Mr Saghei says most products sourced within the US supply chain often disrupt the ecosystems across the planet.
“Every product today that you see within the U.S. supply chain is heavily mined, is heavily sourced and often disrupts the ecosystems, all around the world. So, why not take it from existing products, extract those raw materials and put them back into use?”
Repurposing these means finding new uses for them, such as selling glass to companies that do sandblasting.
Big Bear Commercial Blasting - a business based in Yuma, uses the recycled glass for sandblasting everything from cranes to vehicles.
Big Bear Commercial Blasting founder Erick Speiginer says buying such recycled products is efficient and affordable.
"We believe at Big Bear that being responsible and using a product that would potentially end up in a landfill, we think it's responsible to take it and use it in a recycled form for our industry. And we just think it's the right thing to do. If the glass is being made specifically for our industry, opposed to something that has already been used, and then is being repurposed in our industry, it's going to be a lot more expensive to have the new glass than it is the recycled.”
By 2050, solar waste could total some 78 million tons globally, according to estimates by experts.
The European Union is currently the only region that has specific regulations for recycling solar cells.
Australia is estimated to accumulate at least one million tonnes of solar panel waste by 2047.
There are currently six main companies who recycle solar panels and products across the country, who charge between 10 and 20 dollars per panel to recycle them.
