Are we headed for a solar waste crisis?

June 21, 2017

Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it.

Neither does California, a world leader in deploying solar panels. Only Europe requires solar panel makers to collect and dispose of solar waste at the end of their lives.

All of which raises the question: just how big of a problem is solar waste?

Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue of nuclear waste.

We found:

• Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.

• If solar and nuclear produce the same amount of electricity over the next 25 years that nuclear produced in 2016, and the wastes are stacked on football fields, the nuclear waste would reach the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (52 meters), while the solar waste would reach the height of two Mt. Everests (16 km).

http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-headed-for-a-solar-waste-crisis

May 23, 2018, 12:28pm

If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much Toxic Waste?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/#1f9860e121cc

More solar panels mean more waste and there’s no easy solution

It’s going to be a major problem by 2050

Oct 25, 2018


https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18018820/solar-panel-waste-chemicals-energy-environment-recycling

Solar Panels Produce Tons of Toxic Waste—Literally

A closer look at solar panels opens a wide array of questions that need answers.

Monday, November 18, 2019https://fee.org/articles/solar-panels-produce-tons-of-toxic-waste-literally/