I wonder if we'll eventually see the same problem with a growing number of expired electric car batteries too?
Growing number of Solar panels going to landfill due to cost of 'recycling'.
Millions of solar panels in California risk being dumped on landfill sites as they reach the end of their life cycles.
Over the past two decades, more than 1.3 million homeowners and builders took advantage of state incentives to install the panels on their rooftops.
However, they have a lifespan of 25-30 years and defunct ones are starting to pile up in dumps, raising fears they will contaminate groundwater with toxic metals such as lead, selenium and cadmium.
Sam Vanderhoof, a solar industry expert and chief executive of Recycle PV Solar, told the Los Angeles Times it estimated only one in ten panels were recycled because the process is expensive and time-consuming.
It costs about $20 to $30 to recycle a panel compared with $1 to $2 to send it to a landfill, according to figures from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “The industry is supposed to be green,” Vanderhoof said. “But in reality, it’s all about the money.”
California, with abundant all-year sunshine, was a pioneer in the adoption of solar power. In 2006 it introduced the California Solar Initiative which granted $3.3 billion in subsidies for installing panels on rooftops.
While the scheme was considered a success, officials are now grappling with how to safely dispose of the panels.
Serasu Duran, assistant professor at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business in Canada, warned in an academic paper last year that the industry was “woefully unprepared for the deluge of waste that is likely to come”.
The issue is not limited to California — a solar panel was installed every 60 seconds last year in the US, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Duran told the LA Times: “While all the focus has been on building this renewable capacity, not much consideration has been put on the end of life of these technologies.”
