The race to solve solar energy's recycling problem

Right now, millions of old solar panels are headed for landfills. This is not just really bad news for the environment as there are heavy metals like cadmium or lead in some of them, it's also a huge waste of raw materials. Within the EU, solar panels already have to be recycled. But companies are still chasing the tech that makes it viable to reuse the recovered materials in new solar panels.

#planeta #solarpanel #solarrecycling

We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

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Credits:
Reporter: Kai Steinecke
Supervising Editor: Michael Trobridge
Camera: Luis Carballo
Video Editor: Frederik Willmann
Fact-check: Alexander Paquet
Thumbnail: Em Chabridon

Read more:
Meta Study Recycling Solar Panels https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...
LCA Assesment of Disposed and Recycled End-of-Life Solar Panels https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/19/...
NREL Polymer-free Panels https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/...
TNO Release Encapsulant https://www.tno.nl/en/sustainable/ren...

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:54 Difficult solar recycling
3:12 First step: Heat
5:51 Mechanical sorting & alternatives
8:21 Chemical recycling
10:32 Economics
14:19 Redesign solar panels
15:25 Conclusion