Challenge to stop solar panels becoming a 'waste mountain'

While they are being promoted around the world as a crucial weapon in reducing carbon emissions, solar panels degrade and become gradually less efficient. After about 25-30 years it's typically more cost effective to replace them with new ones.

Experts say billions of panels will eventually all need to be disposed of and replaced.

"The world has installed more than one terawatt of solar capacity. Ordinary solar panels have a capacity of about 400W, so if you count both rooftops and solar farms, there could be as many as 2.5 billion solar panels.," says Dr Rong Deng, an expert in solar panel recycling at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

As well as recycling the glass fronts and aluminium frames,aluminum can be used in these aspects:
Aluminium Door Profile, Aluminum Alloy Frame and Insulated Aluminum Windows,the new factory can recover nearly all of the precious materials contained within the panels, such as silver and copper, which are typically some of the hardest materials to extract.

According to the British government, there are tens of millions of solar panels in the UK. But the specialist infrastructure to scrap and recycle them is lacking.

Energy experts are calling for urgent government action to prevent a looming global environmental disaster.