I'm always really skeptical about articles that portray solar panels as some kind of hazardous waste product that's some looming threat we need to consider. This article is no exception. Solar...
I'm always really skeptical about articles that portray solar panels as some kind of hazardous waste product that's some looming threat we need to consider. This article is no exception.
Solar panels are mostly glass and silicon wafers. They're made of sand, and... well, also sand. There aren't really any toxic compounds here. Perhaps there's lead in the solder, but that's super easy to recover. The frames are aluminum, which are also super easy to recover. The rest can just be broken up, crushed, and turned back into sand.
The environmental impact of solar panels is in their production, which is significant enough to talk about, but nowhere near the impacts of traditional energy sources. These articles never seem to mention how much it would cost to decomission a coal mine, coal processing plant, or coal generator, or what kinds of hazmat teams would be required.
Solar panels are glass and silicon wafers. How many glass bottles are made for beer every year? That's a lot of smelting. Uses a ton of energy. People say the phosphorous doping process puts chemicals in the water. Phosphoric acid is an ingredient in Coca Cola; why is no one upset about the environmental impact of that? The process of making silicon wafers is energy intensive, sure, but how many electronic devices with chips in them do you dispose of each year?
Any article that starts off saying solar has a negative environmental impact but doesn't follow up by comparing it to traditional energy sources is suspicious at best, but more likely it's disingenuous and misleading on purpose.
It seems like you’re criticizing the article for something that’s mostly not in it. The article doesn’t actually say that putting millions of old solar panels in landfills is a big environmental...
It seems like you’re criticizing the article for something that’s mostly not in it. The article doesn’t actually say that putting millions of old solar panels in landfills is a big environmental problem. (It’s more of an implicit assumption.) It doesn’t make any comparisons about how bad this is compared to other kinds of waste. Certainly these would be good things to know!
But I thought the article was useful for what’s there - an explanation of why recycling old solar panels mostly isn’t being done and what it might take to make it economical. It seems there’s plenty of room for improvement. And there are some good links for further reading.
I think this particular article is OK, but in general I'm just tired of hearing about recycling renewable power generation. It ends up feeling like concern trolling by the media, especially since...
I think this particular article is OK, but in general I'm just tired of hearing about recycling renewable power generation. It ends up feeling like concern trolling by the media, especially since it fails to discuss the opportunity cost of continuing to use the air that we all breathe as the world's largest landfill, and the incredibly low risk that modern landfills present.
It's far from the worst environmental problem out there, but I do think society needs to get ahead of this, given the huge scale of solar panel manufacturing. In some places they're practically...
It's far from the worst environmental problem out there, but I do think society needs to get ahead of this, given the huge scale of solar panel manufacturing. In some places they're practically paving the earth with them. (The pictures in that Atlantic article are a pretty good indication.)
I’m far more concerned with the effect of decreasing albedo to the environment in these large scale installations than I am with the problems of recycling old and defective panels.
I’m far more concerned with the effect of decreasing albedo to the environment in these large scale installations than I am with the problems of recycling old and defective panels.
Yeah, they're black because they're designed to absorb solar energy. That's what solar panels do! But if they're 20% efficient, 80% is lost. They can also provide shade, which can be beneficial...
Yeah, they're black because they're designed to absorb solar energy. That's what solar panels do! But if they're 20% efficient, 80% is lost.
They can also provide shade, which can be beneficial depending on installation. The sunlight that hits the solar panels would have hit something else.
The problem is that the 80% that doesn’t get converted to energy is that it becomes heat so instead of reflecting that energy out of the atmosphere it keeps things hot on earth. I doubt it’s much...
The problem is that the 80% that doesn’t get converted to energy is that it becomes heat so instead of reflecting that energy out of the atmosphere it keeps things hot on earth. I doubt it’s much of a problem with the current scale, but if we “cover the earth” with them I imagine it would be more pressing.
(I think you already got what I was referring to, but I realize that this context might be lost for others so I’m specifying it here.)
Watercooling panels can fix this issue by actually using that waste heat while also improving the efficiency of the panels, this is being tested in a lot of locations already though its struggling...
Watercooling panels can fix this issue by actually using that waste heat while also improving the efficiency of the panels, this is being tested in a lot of locations already though its struggling due to the added complexity and maintenance concerns. Another way to turn this negative into a positive is solar mirror collection where instead of using PV panels they just collect solar energy into a molten salt solution and use that to generate electricity via turbines.
But even traditional PV panels radiate most of their absorbed heat back out into the atmosphere via radiative sky cooling so its not really a concern even at large scales.
In 2023, about 90% of old or faulty solar panels in the U.S. ended up in landfills. Millions of panels have been installed worldwide over the past few decades – and by about 2030, so many will be ready to retire that they could cover about 3,000 football fields.
...
Sending a solar panel to a landfill costs between US$1 and $5 in the U.S. But recycling it can cost three to four times as much, around $18. And the valuable materials inside solar panels, such as silver and copper, are in small amounts, so they’re worth about $10 to $12 – which makes recycling a money-losing prospect. Improvements in the recycling process may change the economics.
But for now, it’s even hard to reclaim the glass in solar panels. Many layers are glued together and need to be separated before they can be melted down for reuse. And if the separation is not precise enough, the glass that is recovered won’t be of high enough quality to use in making other solar panels or windows. It will be suitable only for lower-quality uses such as fill material in construction projects.
Recycling is getting much cheaper and more efficient, but it's always going to be hard to beat just digging a big hole and dumping all our problems in it. Maybe we should re-think our whole...
Recycling is getting much cheaper and more efficient, but it's always going to be hard to beat just digging a big hole and dumping all our problems in it.
Maybe we should re-think our whole strategy when it's cheaper to just throw it away than actually get the useful materials back in the future. Recycling should be heavily incentivised by both the government and the companies who make the panels. We need to stop treating our finite natural resources as disposable
Just think; at some point it'll be true that a dump is a fine concentration of resources just sitting there right below the surface, and then people can dig them up. They aren't really going...
Just think; at some point it'll be true that a dump is a fine concentration of resources just sitting there right below the surface, and then people can dig them up. They aren't really going anywhere, they're just waiting. At least with solar panels, they're mostly just going to hang out and wait to be dug up.
Landfills can actually be fairly complex systems, with multiple things in place to prevent leaks, divert generated gases, even use volatile gasses for energy generation. I think it's an economy of...
Landfills can actually be fairly complex systems, with multiple things in place to prevent leaks, divert generated gases, even use volatile gasses for energy generation. I think it's an economy of scale thing, and that the hole no matter how expensive can then house just about anything while recycling technology is very targeted. Makes the per unit cost on recycling much higher.
I was mostly just focused on the wastefulness aspect of landfills, though I do appreciate I definitely oversimplified them. I can understand throwing out useless trash, but it really frustrates me...
I was mostly just focused on the wastefulness aspect of landfills, though I do appreciate I definitely oversimplified them. I can understand throwing out useless trash, but it really frustrates me when things that are perfectly recyclable are thrown away because it's marginally cheaper to just bury them.
No, didn't mean to call you out or anything, I've just seen some engineering videos on landfills and was impressed with some of the complexity and felt the need to rep them. Have a great day!
No, didn't mean to call you out or anything, I've just seen some engineering videos on landfills and was impressed with some of the complexity and felt the need to rep them.
I'm always really skeptical about articles that portray solar panels as some kind of hazardous waste product that's some looming threat we need to consider. This article is no exception.
Solar panels are mostly glass and silicon wafers. They're made of sand, and... well, also sand. There aren't really any toxic compounds here. Perhaps there's lead in the solder, but that's super easy to recover. The frames are aluminum, which are also super easy to recover. The rest can just be broken up, crushed, and turned back into sand.
The environmental impact of solar panels is in their production, which is significant enough to talk about, but nowhere near the impacts of traditional energy sources. These articles never seem to mention how much it would cost to decomission a coal mine, coal processing plant, or coal generator, or what kinds of hazmat teams would be required.
Solar panels are glass and silicon wafers. How many glass bottles are made for beer every year? That's a lot of smelting. Uses a ton of energy. People say the phosphorous doping process puts chemicals in the water. Phosphoric acid is an ingredient in Coca Cola; why is no one upset about the environmental impact of that? The process of making silicon wafers is energy intensive, sure, but how many electronic devices with chips in them do you dispose of each year?
Any article that starts off saying solar has a negative environmental impact but doesn't follow up by comparing it to traditional energy sources is suspicious at best, but more likely it's disingenuous and misleading on purpose.
It seems like you’re criticizing the article for something that’s mostly not in it. The article doesn’t actually say that putting millions of old solar panels in landfills is a big environmental problem. (It’s more of an implicit assumption.) It doesn’t make any comparisons about how bad this is compared to other kinds of waste. Certainly these would be good things to know!
But I thought the article was useful for what’s there - an explanation of why recycling old solar panels mostly isn’t being done and what it might take to make it economical. It seems there’s plenty of room for improvement. And there are some good links for further reading.
I think this particular article is OK, but in general I'm just tired of hearing about recycling renewable power generation. It ends up feeling like concern trolling by the media, especially since it fails to discuss the opportunity cost of continuing to use the air that we all breathe as the world's largest landfill, and the incredibly low risk that modern landfills present.
It's far from the worst environmental problem out there, but I do think society needs to get ahead of this, given the huge scale of solar panel manufacturing. In some places they're practically paving the earth with them. (The pictures in that Atlantic article are a pretty good indication.)
Fortunately, there is time to figure it out.
I’m far more concerned with the effect of decreasing albedo to the environment in these large scale installations than I am with the problems of recycling old and defective panels.
Yeah, they're black because they're designed to absorb solar energy. That's what solar panels do! But if they're 20% efficient, 80% is lost.
They can also provide shade, which can be beneficial depending on installation. The sunlight that hits the solar panels would have hit something else.
The problem is that the 80% that doesn’t get converted to energy is that it becomes heat so instead of reflecting that energy out of the atmosphere it keeps things hot on earth. I doubt it’s much of a problem with the current scale, but if we “cover the earth” with them I imagine it would be more pressing.
(I think you already got what I was referring to, but I realize that this context might be lost for others so I’m specifying it here.)
Watercooling panels can fix this issue by actually using that waste heat while also improving the efficiency of the panels, this is being tested in a lot of locations already though its struggling due to the added complexity and maintenance concerns. Another way to turn this negative into a positive is solar mirror collection where instead of using PV panels they just collect solar energy into a molten salt solution and use that to generate electricity via turbines.
But even traditional PV panels radiate most of their absorbed heat back out into the atmosphere via radiative sky cooling so its not really a concern even at large scales.
From the article:
...
Recycling is getting much cheaper and more efficient, but it's always going to be hard to beat just digging a big hole and dumping all our problems in it.
Maybe we should re-think our whole strategy when it's cheaper to just throw it away than actually get the useful materials back in the future. Recycling should be heavily incentivised by both the government and the companies who make the panels. We need to stop treating our finite natural resources as disposable
Just think; at some point it'll be true that a dump is a fine concentration of resources just sitting there right below the surface, and then people can dig them up. They aren't really going anywhere, they're just waiting. At least with solar panels, they're mostly just going to hang out and wait to be dug up.
It would help if they neatly stacked all the solar panels in one place and remembered where they buried them.
Landfills can actually be fairly complex systems, with multiple things in place to prevent leaks, divert generated gases, even use volatile gasses for energy generation. I think it's an economy of scale thing, and that the hole no matter how expensive can then house just about anything while recycling technology is very targeted. Makes the per unit cost on recycling much higher.
I was mostly just focused on the wastefulness aspect of landfills, though I do appreciate I definitely oversimplified them. I can understand throwing out useless trash, but it really frustrates me when things that are perfectly recyclable are thrown away because it's marginally cheaper to just bury them.
No, didn't mean to call you out or anything, I've just seen some engineering videos on landfills and was impressed with some of the complexity and felt the need to rep them.
Have a great day!
I can’t comment on OP article due to time, but it reminds meme of this post from hacker news yesterday that is just interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/photography/archive/2025/07/photos-china-solar-power-energy/683488/
These are amazing photos!