Australia’s unprecedented adoption of solar energy presents both an environmental triumph and an impending waste management challenge. With more than 3.19 million PV installations generating over 27.2 gigawatts of power, the nation leads the world in per-capita solar energy generation. This clean energy infrastructure, weighing approximately 1.3 million tonnes, represents both a remarkable achievement in renewable energy adoption and a looming recycling challenge.
While solar power reduces carbon emissions, the industry faces a critical sustainability challenge. Forecasts indicate an 18-fold increase in solar panel e-waste between 2019 and 2030. With the average lifespan of solar panels being approximately 20 years, Australia’s early adoption of solar technology means we’re now approaching a critical juncture where the first wave of installations will reach end-of-life.
“The ‘stuff’ in e-waste – in particular, solar panels – isn’t trash. It’s valuable material that can be reused,” says Sircel CEO, Anthony Karam. “We should be doing whatever we can to support scalable and commercially robust solutions to allow that material to be liberated and re-introduced back into the circular economy. We can’t continue to be a single-use society.”
Breaking new ground in solar recycling
In response to this challenge, Sircel is launching an initiative: a solar panel recycling facility based in Parkes, Australia. This state-of-the-art facility represents a step forward in addressing Australia’s mounting e-waste crisis by tackling the incoming “avalanche” of end-of-life solar panels.
The environmental implications are substantial. Historically, most defunct solar panels – up to 85 per cent in Australia – end up in landfill. Valuable materials are lost, and potentially harmful components can leach into soil and groundwater. Sircel’s facility achieves recovery rates of up to 100 per cent of materials from each panel, reducing landfill waste while returning resources to the circular economy.
The facility employs cutting-edge technology, enabling the systematic breakdown of solar panels into their constituent materials.
“Solar panels are 100 percent recyclable,” explains Karam. “The aluminium is generally high grade so when it comes out clean it can be reused easily. It has high-quality glass as well, and there’s plenty of downstream industrial uses for it. As for the wafer itself, there’s a little bit of copper, but predominantly silver and silicon, which are also sought-after elements.”
Scale and impact
The processing line methodically removes the junction box, aluminium frame, and separates the glass from the laminate in just one minute per panel. At full capacity, the facility can process at the rate of one panel per minute. That’s more than 420 panels a day and more than 100 tonnes per year.
To give a sense of volumes, using a 100MW solar farm as an example, out of roughly the 250, 000 panels installed on the site, up to 7500 can be broken/defective – this is close to a month’s supply for the plant to process. With Australia’s rapid solar adoption, particularly in the commercial and industrial sectors, the volume of panels to soon be recycled is substantial. Large commercial installations can range up to 2MW in size, while residential installations – which account for over 20GW of Australia’s solar capacity across 3.3 million households – typically comprise 16-18 panels per system.
Market development and innovation
Sircel has well established markets for recovered aluminium and copper, and is actively developing outlets for other materials recovered, including glass cullet and plastics components.
While global solutions for silicon recovery at scale remain elusive, Sircel continues to invest in research and development.
“We’ve got a whole wave of panels that are coming to their end of life soon, and we need a better solution for them,” says Karam.
The company works with partners to process cell laminates using conventional technologies, maximising precious metal recovery while minimising landfill waste.
Industry challenges
Despite the environmental imperative, there are challenges within solar recycling that might lead some operators to compromise standards and cut corners.
Sircel charges a sustainable gate fee for panel processing, but some operators offer to pay for panels, raising questions about the viability of their recycling practices.
“The minimum gate fee for the panel should be less than it would cost to go to landfill so it’s a win for the customer,” said Karam. “I know the numbers intimately. My question is, ‘How can you make money if you’re paying someone $5 a panel?’”
Corner-cutting and driving prices down leaves little incentive for anyone to build the infrastructure required to properly tackle this problem.
The e-waste recycling industry can be equally opaque, and some operators still employ unethical practices, including shipping waste overseas.
“You have to invest in plant and machinery,” he said. “Some people are saying they are processing 20,000 tonnes a year manually. How can you manually dismantle 20,000 tonnes of e-waste a year?
What’s really happening is that the waste is taken to a facility where they cut a cord then ship it overseas. They can tell their clients that they’ve recycled e-waste and even give them a certificate saying so.”
The need for cohesive policy
The solar recycling industry currently lacks comprehensive regulatory frameworks for managing end-of-life solar panels. The Smart Energy Council has proposed product stewardship schemes and developed ideas that will have great impact, but Karam advocates for better support for specialised recyclers.
“We’re actually a green technology company in resource regeneration. We don’t consider ourselves to be in the waste industry,” Karam emphasises. “Government and large industry players understand there’s a huge difference between these two things: we’re a critical cog in the circular economy machine, which should be building the fabric of our communities.”
As Australia’s solar capacity continues to grow, the need for responsible end-of-life management becomes increasingly critical. For most companies, institutions, and households who invest in solar, the environmental and decarbonisation benefits are paramount. End-of-life management is crucial to ensure that system upgrades don’t negate the environmental benefits delivered through their lifetime. Sircel works with national waste channel partners focused on increasing landfill diversion rates and improving ESG outcomes. However, Karam said there’s a need for industry-wide cooperation.
“We just need more cohesive framing around the consumption and management of e-waste,” he said.
With its Parkes facility, Sircel is setting new standards for solar panel recycling in Australia, proving that environmental responsibility and resource recovery can go hand in hand. The challenge now lies in ensuring that the entire industry adopts similarly high standards to create a truly sustainable circular economy for solar energy infrastructure.