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Comment by fedeb95 | Hacker News Reader

I keep wondering how we'll get rid of used batteries and panels in the future.

Batteries are recyclable and a bunch of companies are already doing it, for example: https://li-cycle.com/press-releases/li-cycle-reports-full-ye.... As demand for battery materials grows I think recycling will become more profitable and widespread.

Solar panels are also largely recyclable, especially since most of the panel is metal and glass (which we've been recycling for millennia): https://www.epa.gov/hw/solar-panel-recycling. I don't know as much about recycling the actual useful part of the panel, and I'm sure it depends on the type, but there are companies doing this as well: https://www.solarcycle.us/.

However efficient the recycling is, it can't possibly be worse than what we do with used oil, gas, and coal (set it on fire immediately and then pretend it magically disappeared).

> I don't know as much about recycling the actual useful part of the panel

For almost all panels out there, even the toxic ones, recycling should be a lot cheaper than purifying new silicon.

It's not viable today because we have way too little trash to even start the process.

The question you want to ask, as always in recycling, is: "How much water do these processes use?"

Is it as efficient as recycling plastic bottles? Effectively in the landfill & ocean.

Theory & marketing science fiction are all well & good...But let's have some success with existing recycling programs before assuming that everything is going to work perfectly according to someone's vision.

If you are actually serious about reducing CO2 emissions, let's start with the biggest producer of CO2. The US Military & MIC. Cause I don't see any solar powered military vehicles, munitions, or ordinances anytime in the next 100 years.

How ironic when it's time for the US Military. With it's gas guzzling transports. To be used to enforce environmental statutes. Against the rural/suburban peasants who demand their own grid.

You could take every PV panel ever made and just stack them up in the desert. It would hardly take any space and nobody would notice.

That is, if you refuse to recycle them, which would be silly.

Surely something with a higher energy output to waste ratio like nuclear energy waste would be an even better compromise then?

If you stack spent fuel bad things occur. And no, I don't agree. The volume and mass of PV panels in the world is already negligible and making the waste stream smaller is not important or relevant to anyone. Even in an extreme case nobody would pursue, it doesn't take any space. In a sane case it is a high quality silicon feedstock.

Yeah that plan works great for things like tires. It's not like there are multiple large tire dumps in the world with fires that are always burning in them.

Did you know that something like 70% of tires in America are recycled?

Also that 2,000 times more tires are made than PV modules? 55GT compared to 22MT annually.

That is simply a policy decision. Here in Norway such things are collected and recycled.

Damn, I didn't know solar panels were flammable.

How many miles do they get before you have to rotate them?

Better solid waste than gas.

many interesting responses which I'll read in depth better later. My comment wasn't against solar panels and batteries and in favour of oil etc. as some assumed. Just interested, because recycling seems a pretty big deal to become really sustainable in all economic matters. In my mind, which might be wrong about many things, until we get a rate of recycling >= that of waste there's a problem, maybe showing up later than today, but eventually it will surface again. Repeating myself, this is my mind model and of course subject to error.

Battery recycling is already spinning up and becoming profitable. It also means we won't have to rely as much on imports of rare earth materials because we can use already mined materials over time!

Should be easier than cleaning up oil spills.

There are recycling pilot projects out there, but yeah it's a problem.

Do you also wonder how we'll get rid of used coal power plants, massive piles of toxic fly ash, and tons of pollutants from natural gas plants? Because so far the answer is not good.

I know how we can get rid of nuclear fuel. Coal is very very dirty... nobody challenges that

How can we get rid of spent nuclear fuel

Burn it in a fast reactor

How do we get rid of a fast reactor's spent parts?

(Yeah, it should be possible to design a reactor so it consumes more long-lived waste than it creates. But I don't think anybody ever bothered to do that.)

Nobody challenges it, but when someone says "I wonder how we'll get rid of the byproducts of solar", it obviously frames the discussion differently than "I wonder how much less impact the byproducts of solar have on the environment than those of coal".

Fly ash is a key ingredient in Portland cement.

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