Shining a light on solar recycling: From rooftops to recycling

Council is excited to be part of the circular economy and reduce environmental impacts by ensuring materials from old solar panels live on to create new products.

Council’s very first solar PV system was installed on Thomastown Library in 2004 and recently decommissioned to make way for a larger system. But the journey doesn’t end there for the solar panels.

In Victoria, solar panels are deemed e-waste and banned from landfill, so recycling becomes a vital way of reducing waste at the end of a panel’s 20-25 year lifespan.

For our Thomastown Library solar panels, Lotus Energy, Australia’s first solar panel recycler, based locally in Thomastown, will ensure an impressive 95 per cent of the materials in the solar panels are recovered and re-used. Materials such as silicone, glass, aluminium, copper and plastic are salvaged and ready to be re-purposed into items, such as tiles, benchtops and electronic cables.