Contributed by Brett Henderson | Co-founder and CEO of SPR
Why a truly efficient, circular economy means going local
As millions of panels are being decommissioned each year in the U.S. alone, we have no time (or panels) to waste when it comes to fortifying a solid recycling infrastructure. With the end-of-life (EOL) solar industry still in its early years, only a handful of companies have begun recycling operations across the US. Of these recyclers, an overwhelming majority appear to be adopting a framework of collection points that feed a single facility, receiving EOL panels at one location to then transport them to a secondary processing location.
However, establishing a distributed network of recycling facilities is critical to making nationwide solar recycling in the US more efficient, sustainable, affordable, and achievable.
Regional Recycling Benefits Breakdown
Lowering Transportation Costs: Transportation is one of the largest expenses in EOL solar management. Long-haul shipping of decommissioned panels can quickly incur costs, making it imperative to maximize transportation efficiency. By processing panels where they are initially received, these redundant long-haul shipping costs, often involving multiple cross-country trips before panels reach their final recycling destination, can be largely eliminated.
The bottom line? Cutting out miles of transport across dozens of truckloads can translate into tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings for project owners and operators. In larger re-power projects, the transportation savings would be in the millions of dollars. Regionalization of processing facilities means recycling becomes increasingly cost-competitive with landfilling, and more panels will ultimately get recycled.
Ensuring Compliance: The rules not only vary from state to state, but they are also changing fast, with states creating new permitting, storage, transportation, and waste classification standards. Multiple states have recently implemented legislation addressing recycling mandates, landfill bans, and reporting requirements for renewable energy recycling facilities. For example, in Texas, an outright landfill ban was passed in tandem with reporting requirements for recyclers processing EOL renewable energy components — meanwhile, North Carolina passed a C&D landfill ban that comes into effect later this year. In addition, there are federal waste requirements to consider, no matter where you are. This evolving environment requires close, constant attention, particularly as policies shift in response to growing deployment volumes and environmental priorities.
That is where regional facilities come into play. Complying with these various standards is no easy task. Regional facilities with proven expertise and technology ensure that all federal, state, and local requirements are met, providing peace of mind for developers and owners while accelerating progress toward a circular solar economy. This comprehensive regulatory awareness helps ensure that panels are managed and processed in a way that ensures compliance across the board, both locally and nationally.
Reducing Emissions: Effective, true recycling isn’t just clean commodity separation and reintroduction into the supply chain. It’s also considering operational environmental impact and actively working to lessen it. A critical advantage of regional recycling is the reduction of transportation-related emissions, which can very quickly accumulate within a framework that relies on collection points.
For example, transporting a loaded truck of panels 1,000 miles can generate more than five metric tonnes of CO₂. Extrapolating this across an entire fleet, where panels are first transported from installation sites to a collection point, then shipped again to a recycling facility, the environmental impact can become significant. With incoming volumes of EOL panels projected to reach millions of tons, we cannot afford to rely on inefficient logistics. These emissions can be substantially reduced through regional processing, eliminating the need to haul material hundreds or even thousands of miles.
Then, by routing commodities back into regional economies, further reduction in transportation distances and related emissions can be achieved, bolstering domestic industries and developing the framework for true circularity.
The True Role of Recycling
True circularity depends on true recycling, specifically, the clean separation of commodities before they ever leave a domestic facility. When materials are commingled rather than properly separated, the lower-value glass cannot be recovered or reused domestically. Instead, commingled materials must be sent to an overseas smelter where the higher-value metals can be extracted and refined, using the glass merely as flux and discarding it as waste in the process. The result? The largest material component of the panel travels halfway around the world only to potentially be trashed.
This is not a minor inefficiency. The only materials recovered in this process are the precious metals, which represent the smallest fraction of the panel by mass. Everything else, the glass above all, is mostly wasted (sometimes flux can be made into products). It means the majority of every panel handled by an incomplete recycler generates unnecessary, entirely avoidable emissions through transcontinental transport, not to advance circularity but to reach a disposal endpoint.
Clean separation changes this entirely. True recycling technologies can achieve separation and recovery rates of up to 100%, turning what is otherwise a disposal liability into a reusable material stream. When panels are properly separated at the point of recycling, glass can be directed back into domestic supply chains as a clean, usable commodity, no overseas shipping required. The contrast is straightforward: commingling sends the bulk of a solar panel across the world to be trashed. Clean separation keeps it here, in use, feeding a myriad of domestic manufacturing industries. Regional facilities operating at this standard are positioned to meet both state and national compliance requirements and further advance circularity in the US, making them a durable, scalable solution as EOL solar volume grows and regulatory frameworks tighten.
The Path is Clear
As more panels head towards retirement and solar demand grows, true recycling will become increasingly integral to ensuring a circular and sustainable industry. Regional recycling eliminates unnecessary costs, time, and emissions while accelerating circularity. By reducing inefficiencies and fast-tracking recovered materials back into regional supply chains, it is the clear path forward.
About the Author
With a lifelong commitment to recycling, Brett Henderson, CEO and co-founder of SPR, has over fifteen years of experience in the recycling industry. Brett has advocated for a circular economy while creating eco-friendly, efficient recycling programs for Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, universities, manufacturers, and more. He served as an elected board member of the Carolina Recycling Association, serves on the NC State Department of Environmental Quality Advisory Board, and commonly speaks at trade shows in the solar, ITAD, and electronics recycling industries. He earned his Bachelor’s from The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business and his MBA from Cleveland State University’s Monte Ahuja College of Business.
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