The End-of-life (EOL) management of PV Panels has been discussed for over a decade, with many reports, strategies, policies, and industries created to minimise their waste impact. As the cohesiveness of the European and USA PV value chain evolves, so too does access to new thinking and ways of designing, manufacturing, and operating to move from recycling to circularity, where we stop waste being produced in the first place. This is potentially a big shift in thinking and redesign of componentry and manufacturing processes for solar PV.
Since 2018, Circle Economy has been producing the Circularity Gap Report to help understand how circular economy strategies can contribute to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. It also helps give clarity on where we stand today in achieving these goals and helps clarify how material extraction and GHG emissions are linked.
The 2022 Circularity Gap Report highlights that our world is only 8.6% circular. To put this in context, in 2019 global use of materials exceeded 100 billion tonnes with over 90% of all the materials extracted and used, wasted; currently only 8.6% of the materials make it back into the economy.1
