To Save Solar Panels From Landfills, Startup Is Smashing Them Instead
Up to 90% of solar panels end up in landfills. This startup has built a profitable business recycling them instead.
We Recycle Solar Inc., a four-year-old startup, sees a growing business opportunity handling solar panels that would otherwise end up in a landfill.
Photographer: Caitlin O'Hara/Bloomberg
Inside a noisy industrial plant on the outskirts of Yuma, Arizona, there’s a machine that smashes old solar panels into bits. It can handle 10 panels a minute, as many as 7,500 a day, extracting bits of copper and silver and aluminum, and pulverizing most of the rest into a gritty powder.
It’s the biggest US site for recycling old photovoltaic panels, according to We Recycle Solar Inc., a four-year-old startup that owns the plant. The company sees a growing business opportunity handling panels that would otherwise end up in a landfill. With potentially billions of panels needing disposal in the coming years, the market for recycled materials may reach $2.7 billion a year by 2030, and $80 billion by 2050, according to a report last year from Rystad Energy.