US EditionWasting Away in Wind-and-Solarville
- The United States is increasingly challenged with managing the disposal and recycling of waste generated by hundreds of millions of solar panels and tens of thousands of wind turbines as they reach the end of their operational lifespans.
- This issue results from insufficient planning, lightly regulated markets, and laws mandating recycling that remain difficult to enforce or unimplemented, such as Washington's 2017 solar panel recycling law effective July 1, 2025.
- Solar panels contain minor amounts of hazardous and valuable materials tangled with plastic, resins, and glue, making dismantling difficult and costly, while wind turbines, mostly metal with large concrete bases and blades that cannot be reused, present separate end-of-life challenges.
- Experts estimate solar recycling could reach $2.7 billion by 2030, but extracting valuable components requires high-tech processes and profitability remains uncertain, with 90% of solar waste currently going to landfills and no national tracking system in place.
- If disposal fees are not incorporated and regulatory gaps remain, taxpayers risk bearing high cleanup costs while renewable waste increases exponentially, though some experts believe carbon emission reductions outweigh these environmental and economic challenges.
14 Articles
14 Articles
BEST OF THE WEB: Wasting Away in Wind-and-Solarville
While green advocates commonly use the terms renewable, sustainable, and net zero to describe their efforts, the dirty little secret is that much of the waste from solar panels and wind turbines is ending up in landfills. The current amounts of fiberglass, resins, aluminum and other chemicals - not to mention propeller blades from giant wind turbines - pose no threat current to local town dumps, but this largely ignored problem will become more …
Wasting away in Wind-and-Solarville
While green advocates commonly use the terms renewable, sustainable, and net zero to describe their efforts, the dirty little secret is that much of the waste from solar panels and wind turbines is ending up in landfills. The current amounts of fiberglass, resins, aluminum and other chemicals – not to mention propeller blades from giant wind turbines – pose no threat current to local town dumps, but this largely ignored problem will become more …
Wasting away in wind-and-solarville | The Highland County Press
“Solar waste will grow exponentially in the next 20 years,” Tao said. “Globally, we produced 20-25 million tons of solar panels in 2023. They will come offline in roughly 20 years. That is 20-25 million tons of solar waste a year in 2045.”
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