SolarPanelRecycling.com聽(SPR), a leader in the sustainable energy industry and authority on solar recycling,聽and Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the national trade association for the solar and solar + storage industries,聽are launching a partnership program with Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, to establish convenient drop-off locations for end-of-life residential solar panels. This pilot program will act as a blueprint for expanding the program nationally to make solar panel recycling accessible to all residential solar owners.
After fielding a high volume of inbound calls from residents wanting to divert their solar panels from landfills, SEIA sought out SPR, one of its approved national PV recyclers, to use its already established collection point infrastructure for this innovative residential program. North Carolina, ranked fourth in national solar capacity, will serve as the flagship state for this six-month pilot. The initiative aims to provide SEIA with key insights to create a template for other municipalities across the country.
“For any recycling industry discipline, the residential sector is always the hardest to serve due to the collection costs of unconsolidated recyclables, but cumulatively it could represent a large opportunity to prevent panels from reaching landfills,” said Brett Henderson, CEO of SolarPanelRecycling.com. “With our already established residential drop-off sites, it was a natural fit to work with SEIA and Mecklenburg County to add this additional service. As part of our mission to keep all solar panels out of landfills, we want this program to serve as a blueprint for other regions to adopt residential solar panel recycling nationwide.”
The program will take advantage of five electronic drop-off locations across Mecklenburg County, including SPR’s headquarters in Salisbury, N.C. As all sites already have electronic collection infrastructure and pickup scheduling in place, the program will provide the benefit of solar panel recycling at no cost to residents and with no additional carbon emissions.
“Solar panel collection sites like those in Mecklenburg County聽are paving the way towards a circular economy driven by the sustainable use and reuse of clean energy resources. Thanks to facilities like these, solar panel recycling capacity in the U.S. now exceeds the volume of decommissioned modules entering the waste stream and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future,” SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper.
Mecklenburg County residents or installers can drop off their end-of-life panels at the Compost Central Recycling Center at 140 Valleydale Road in Charlotte to participate in this convenient recycling program. Over the coming weeks, the remaining drop-off locations will open for residential use. Once the program is complete, SEIA will use the data points gathered; such as the number of panels recycled, recovery rates, and landfill aversions; to inform a more robust expansion of the program into other regions.
“Mecklenburg County works to be a leader in responsibly managed resources. Part of this work centers around being good stewards of our environment and lessening dependence on landfills,” said Jeffrey Smithberger, Solar Waste Director of Mecklenburg County. “Partnering with others to find creative methods of recycling old solar panels is very desirable to keep these items out of our landfills. The process also makes it easy for our residents to recycle these special items at our existing recycling centers and we’re excited to initiate this new process.”