Faster replacement of solar panels and the end of life of ones installed at the beginning of the solar panel boom are resulting in a growing glut of used panels. While recycling has been slow to take off, new solutions mean opportunities are growing. 

The Number of Solar Panels is Skyrocketing – and so is Waste

As demand for more electricity for data centers as well as everyday devices shoots upwards, solar panels are being installed increasingly quickly to meet demand. The US market installed 1,435 megawatts in 2025, according to Wood MacKenzie, and it reached a historic milestone by surpassing 10 gigawatts of cumulative national installations. While the market contracted by about 25 percent in 2025, national installed capacity is expected to rebound with 12 percent growth in 2026. 

Even though most solar panels have warranties for about 25 years and can last longer, some panels are being recycled just 10-15 years after installation. As Solar Power World put it, higher-efficiency panels available now offer compelling performance gains and also create a surge of retired modules. Solar panels are thus coming off sites before originally planned.

The result is that the United States is expected to have as much as one million total tons of solar panel waste by 2030, according to the EPA. By 2050, the United States is expected to have the second largest number of end-of-life panels in the world, with as much as 10 million total tons of panels.

The systems to handle this waste are lagging far behind industry growth. 

Recycling is Low, though Growing

To get ahead of this looming waste crisis, Inside Climate News explained, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced in 2023 that it would craft a new rule to reclassify retired solar panels as “universal waste,” a category for materials that need specialized handling. Rulemaking was supposed to begin in June 2025 and to be completed by December 2026. However, it was revised so that work would begin in February 2026 and finish by August 2027. The delay leaves the US without a federal framework for managing millions of tons of panels. And until rules are in place, used solar panels can keep going into landfills like ordinary trash in most states other than Washington and California.

Exacerbating the problem is the relative cost of recycling compared to landfills. As SolarCycle co-founder Jesse Simons explained to Yale Environment, solid waste landfills typically charge $1 to $2 to accept a solar panel. By contrast, his company charges $18 per panel. Clients are willing to pay that rate if, for example, they are unable to find a landfill licensed to accept hazardous waste and assume legal liability for it or they want to minimize the environmental impact of their old panels. 

Despite the cost and the lack of federal regulations, some companies have started to open facilities to process used solar panels. 

SOLARCYCLE, for instance, set up a recycling facility in 2022 and opened a new facility in Georgia in 2026 that has double the throughput. Its new process allows for full landfill diversion and recovers 96 percent of the value from the silver, copper, aluminum, glass and other components. The site is expected to scale up to process up to 5 gigawatts of solar panels each year.

We Recycle Solar in Arizona said its facility has the capacity to process 7,500 modules 69 million pounds in a single year. It plans to quadruple capacity to 522 million pounds per year by 2028. 

Washington has Few Options

While Washington State has been a leader in passing legislation relating to solar panel recycling, implementation of the law has been delayed. The Washington Legislature passed a bill in 2017 to promote a local renewable energy industry. One part of the bill required manufacturers of solar panels to have a Department of Ecology-approved stewardship plan if they wanted to sell their panels in Washington after July 1, 2017. However, implementation has been delayed until January 31, 2031. 

Despite that setback, companies are setting up recycling facilities in Washington. 

In 2025, JinkoSolar announced that its takeback-and-recycling program for end-of-life solar modules had become the first such stewardship program to receive the approval of the Washington State Department of Ecology. It will pick up end-of-life modules registered with the Stewardship Program from commercial, industrial and utility sites in Washington and ensure they are recycled in a sustainable way. 

In Seattle, Resolve Solar says it recovers high-quality solar panels and transforms them into reliable, off-grid power systems. While 90 percent of end-of-life solar panels are landfilled instead of being refurbished, repurposed, or recycled, Resolve Solar said a huge portion of them still have decades of useful life.

Innovation Could Increase Recycling

Solar panels typically include specialized glass, aluminum, silicon, copper wiring, silver, specialized coatings and polymers, as Recycling Today describes them. While the secondary aluminum market is well-established in the US, other materials are harder to sell. Glass is about 70 percent of a solar panel, and because of its specialized nature, it is more difficult to sell. While silicon is perceived as a high-value material, the purity and volume from today’s panels have made it difficult to process economically. Silver and copper can be melted down and sold. Toxic materials such as lead require careful disposal to prevent leaching into soil or groundwater. 

More recently, however, solar panel recycling startups in other countries have developed innovative solutions that enable them to sell silica and silver more easily, making recycling profitable. In Europe, for instance, ROSI uses an innovative chemical and heat process to recover silicon, silver and copper cost-effectively. In Southeast Asia, Neusla uses a layer-by-layer removal technique that allows for the efficient recovery of materials from solar panels and that preserves the quality and purity of recovered materials, making them saleable. While few companies in the US may have this level of technology, expect it to arrive before long and enable recycling of solar panels to deliver usable high-value materials more cost-effectively or even profitably. 

While the need for recycling is growing and solutions have been slow to happen in the US, new practices and processes show promise for speeding up the much-needed opportunities.