Old Solar Panels Are Ending Up In Landfills (house, neighborhood)

[Racer46]

Originally Posted by HereOnMars

That's not really true. There are plastics being reused to make other items such as furniture and clothing. The clothing part isn't new to me but furniture is. Not everything ends up in a landfill or on a floating barge in the middle of the ocean but I think we - as people who actually are affected by this - should be paying more attention. Unless few people really care about tomorrow's world and health of our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I see a lot of complaining around here on matters that are just silly i.e. how much the GDP is or where California ranks in the world or the price of real estate but none of that means diddly if what we do to the state (and planet) turns it into a death trap. At least that's how I see it.

Not all plastics can be re-cycled. The ones tossed in the trash are a mix and no one is taking the time to separate them, except in a few areas. New plastic is cheaper than recycled plastic. Many places just dump it in landfills Easy to look up..

[JGC97]

Originally Posted by Racer46

Not all plastics can be re-cycled. The ones tossed in the trash are a mix and no one is taking the time to separate them, except in a few areas. New plastic is cheaper than recycled plastic. Many places just dump it in landfills Easy to look up..

I know not all can be recycled, Racer and that's a frustrating part of this. Grrrr

I had to call our waste management company to ask which number in the "triangle" should I be recycling and which should I just toss in the trash. If all manufacturing companies would get on the same page and use the plastics that can and should be recycled, it would make it a lot easier. I think sometimes they try and confuse us. <sigh>

[Igor Blevin]

Oops.

Unintended consequences of putting the cart before the horse and having early adopters using materials that needed to have a set structured disposal plan in place before even a single solar panel was ever installed.

Instead, the government rushed solar panels into widespread use with massive taxpayer subsidies, without thinking about any of the consequences on the back end.

Typical stupidity. What did you expect would happen.

Wait until all the old lithium battery EVs need to be scrapped. Is there a plan for that by the US EPA, as we rush to kill off the sales of gasoline powered cars and trucks? No plan. This is a massive future problem.

[mgforshort]

We need to send it back to China because it came from China. They will turn it into dog food with some corn added and we'll buy it back for three times more than what we paid China to take it back. Aren't we a great country now? Long live the Green New Deal !

Sarcasm aside, Henry Ford built his cars 100 years ago and they are still drivable today, in 2022, with a quick tuneup here and there. Solar panels shouldn't be disposable like diapers. I'm not an engineer; maybe someone else here could enlighten us why that isn't happening.

[NORTY FLATZ]

Solar panels contain selenium and silver, amongst other heavy metals. Once these panels break, these metals may leach into ground waters/aquifers.

Then, we drink them and water our crops with them...

Can anyone here spell "mercury poisoning?"

I thought you could....

We'll blame it on "COVID" like the rest...

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

It's never even been discussed by the environmental movement, AFAIK. It was a downside to solar panels that was swept under the rug. The public wasn't informed, generally speaking, of the fact that panels don't last a lifetime; they need to be replaced every 25 years

As mentioned by a reader in the article's comment section, ".....for at least the last 30 years, today's solutions to problems are tomorrows problems. I'll give just one example: plastic grocery bags. They were supposed to be the answer to paper bags, which were derided as the reason trees were being cut down. Full scale implementation of plastic grocery bags has lead to a plastic pollution problem that was easily predictable. I could go on about nuclear power, wind power, and, of course, solar power. We are extremely short sighted and don't seem to care about future generations ability to live in an environment free from toxicity."

[cttransplant85]

Originally Posted by CA4Now

As mentioned by a reader in the article's comment section, ".....for at least the last 30 years, today's solutions to problems are tomorrows problems. I'll give just one example: plastic grocery bags. They were supposed to be the answer to paper bags, which were derided as the reason trees were being cut down. Full scale implementation of plastic grocery bags has lead to a plastic pollution problem that was easily predictable. I could go on about nuclear power, wind power, and, of course, solar power. We are extremely short sighted and don't seem to care about future generations ability to live in an environment free from toxicity."

Were plastic bags that big of a problem? I mean everything I buy is packaged in some kind of plastic, I don’t see how the bags are the problem but not the packaging? It was a nice convenience having plastic bags because you could reuse them around the house and they were easier to carry.

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by cttransplant85

everything I buy is packaged in some kind of plastic

And that's the problem. https://supplychain.edf.org/resource...human%20health.

Originally Posted by cttransplant85

It was a nice convenience having plastic bags because you could reuse them around the house and they were easier to carry.

https://www.city-data.com/forum/cali...c-bag-law.html

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by cttransplant85

Were plastic bags that big of a problem? I mean everything I buy is packaged in some kind of plastic, I don’t see how the bags are the problem but not the packaging? It was a nice convenience having plastic bags because you could reuse them around the house and they were easier to carry.

Plastic isn't biodegradable. Paper bags are. So do we keep cutting trees to turn them into paper bags, or do we use and re-use plastic bags? (A lot of people don't re-use the plastic grocery bags.) A lot of that plastic wrapping, bags, containers, etc. ends up in a floating junk morass out in the ocean. It harms marine wildlife.

[wac_432]

Originally Posted by mgforshort

Sarcasm aside, Henry Ford built his cars 100 years ago and they are still drivable today, in 2022, with a quick tuneup here and there. Solar panels shouldn't be disposable like diapers. I'm not an engineer; maybe someone else here could enlighten us why that isn't happening.

I'm an engineer, and pearl-clutching like this makes me laugh.

Sure, the multi-billion dollar solar industry is a Ponzi scheme that is going to collapse "in 10 years." because that's how we do things. There's always some system that is on the "verge of collapse" according to the scare-mongers that need to sell papers (or get clicks, these days).

Solar panels degrade on a known schedule. I work with panels that are operating just fine after 30+ years, and there are plenty of examples of 50+ year old panels in spacecraft that are still operating in a much harsher environment with much older technology. Honestly, it's likely that efficiency in electronics will improve faster than a homeowner's solar panels degrade, so even if a properly-sized array (and battery backup) is only at 60% original capacity 40 years later, those panels won't "need" to be replaced--they still provide power, just not as much as BOL. If more power is needed, the array can usually be expanded more cheaply than it can be replaced. If you have the roof space, why would you throw out a panel that generates 150W and replace it with one that generates 300W, when you could just keep the 150W panel and install the new one for more overall capacity? Well, you do that when your solar farm or roof has no more space and you have a contractual obligation to provide a certain number of KW. Look at the panels in your neighborhood. See anybody using 100% of their roof space?

Some panels are ending up in the landfill when they should be recycled because they've been damaged by construction accidents, bad weather, or they are VERY old. Some people decided that it is not cost-effective to recycle them or some people don't know any better--as often happens with batteries and E-waste. The more old solar panels, batteries, etc. exists, the more money can be made from recycling, restoring, or properly disposing of them. In the mean time (and even when it's cheaper to recycle the materials than dispose of them) some panels are going to end up in landfills.

Tons of hazardous waste ends up in landfills anyway, that's why landfills are put in stable areas, lined with barriers and absorbent materials, and surrounded by monitoring stations. We try to minimize the amount so that the barriers to hazardous waste leakage aren't saturated, necessitating some even more expensive mitigation.

This isn't Wall-E, that's a hyperbolic interpretation of our waste disposal issues and other social commentary. There is a LOT of empty, stable, non-watershed feeding land that could be turned into a landfill with minimal impact to the community it serves. The reason that there was a panic about landfills filling up (in the 1980's) was because nobody wanted to go through the expense and trouble of building a new one; because they are engineered structures that cost a lot to build and maintain. We don't just chuck our garbage in the nearest arroyo anymore.