RESOURCE OPPORTUNITY: Solar panels on the roof can become the bricks to build a house

Where do old solar panels go when they give up the ghost? A recent visit to a solar panel graveyard provided a revealing look into how a surge in the recycling of this power-generating infrastructure is ­giving rise to new uses for the waste material – giving a small and unexpected boost to South Africa’s moribund manufacturing sector.

To wit, the “cemetery” I visited was a ­recycling facility in Germiston, Gauteng, operated by specialist electronic and hazardous waste recycler Reclite SA.

It’s on track to recover about 10,000 tonnes of solar panels this year, a figure that had only been forecast from 2033 when South Africa’s first 2.66GW of solar capacity under the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme was expected to reach the end of its operating life.

But older panels are coming to the end of their life faster than anticipated, in part because South Africa has some of the most intense irradiance levels on Earth. Storm damage and other factors can also play a role on this front.

New estimates presented at the recent WasteCon 2026 conference see more than 500,000 tonnes of solar panels destined for the scrap heap in South Africa between 2043 and 2048 – a new growth area for the recycling sector with applications for the country’s struggling manufacturing sector.

Globally, the scale is massive as the green energy transition rapidly gains traction and installations surge worldwide.

“By 2030, up to eight million tonnes of solar PV waste could accumulate globally, rising to 78 million tonnes by 2050 under early-loss scenarios,” Professor Suzan Oelofse, principal researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, said in the presentation. “This creates both a waste management burden and a resource opportunity.”

Brimming with goodies

And there are resource opportunities galore. Solar panels are brimming with stuff that is valuable and can be recycled, such as aluminium, copper, silicon and silver. These metals can be extracted, but separation is difficult and costly – which is at least a deterrent to South Africa’s copper theft syndicates.

What is relatively easy and cost-effective to extract is glass, which accounts for 60% to 70% of a solar panel’s weight.

At the Reclite facility, I watched as stacks of solar panels were manually put through a machine that dislodged the frame without damaging the glass.

“A solar panel contains materials that local industries can use. Our job is to recover them at the required quality and at a cost that makes the process commercially viable. Without viable end-markets, recycling becomes little more than an expensive stockpiling exercise,” said Reclite SA managing director Steffen Schröder.

The glass is then processed to produce the desired product. In the first stage, the sharp edges are blunted, a process called deburring. I could grab a handful of the glass without getting lacerated.

The defanged glass shards are then transformed for a range of uses, including blasting and filtration products, coatings and building applications such as bricks. Ground into a fine powder that resembles flour, it can be used as a filler material.

South Africa does not manufacture solar panels, but the discarded material from old panels can be used for domestic manufacturing in a less energy-intensive and costly way than making them from scratch. In short, it aids and abets the government’s stated goal of “beneficiation” against the backdrop of deindustrialisation.

Reclite makes various products from the recycled glass and also sells it to other domestic manufacturers. “It’s not about recycling to make new solar panels. There are other applications in the local economy,” Schröder said.

Solar panels and other renewables are powering South Africa’s green energy transition. And they have other economic uses after they are taken off rooftops, providing an additional ray of light to the domestic manufacturing sector that looks set to swell. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R39. The e-edition of Daily Maverick’s weekly newspaper, DM168, is now free for readers who are signed into their Daily Maverick account. Click here to access the latest e-edition.