Please share the recycling supply chain for solar panels

plqbfbv · 2026-10-18T12:20:07 1792326007

Apparently it's still mostly about Aluminum and Glass as that's 95% of the weight of panels. The silicon is often recycled for precious-metals recovery and not circular. ROSI does try to do high-purity recovery. It seems volumes are still on the smaller side, probably because most of the volume has been deployed in the last 5-10y and they have 20-30y life expectancy. Still a lot of recycling.

luqtas · 2026-10-18T17:04:29 1792343069

i can come up with a bunch of PET plastic research and companies too but go look at the state of oceans...

a primer on actual numbers of recyled solar panels [0] [1]

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12260433/

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09560...

stop eating startup and journalism headlines good intentions promises

uecker · 2026-10-18T08:22:07 1792311727

In the EU solar panels old have to be taken back by the vendor for recycling (as all electronic waste).

hobo123 · 2026-10-18T10:58:27 1792321107

They have to take it back, but that doesn't mean it's recycled.

uecker · 2026-10-18T16:01:43 1792339303

They will have to get recycled at some point.