Hazardous Waste From Solar Panels

Recently passed legislation authorizes dtsc to adopt regulations to designate used spent solar panels that are hazardous wastes as universal waste.

Hazardous waste from solar panels. Solar panels often contain lead cadmium and other toxic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel. Worse rainwater can wash many of these toxics out of the fragments of solar modules over time. Until the new regulations are adopted solar panels that exhibit characteristics of hazardous waste must be managed as hazardous wastes and not as universal wastes. The fact that cadmium can be washed out of solar modules by rainwater is increasingly a concern for local environmentalists like the concerned citizens of fawn lake in virginia where a 6 350 acre solar farm to partly power microsoft data centers is being proposed.

They also contain lead cadmium and other toxic even carcinogenic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel. Approximately 90 of most pv modules are made up of glass. Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants. In the united states today discarded solar panels end up in landfills which means they fail the green requirement that a product be recyclable.

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