Old solar panels contain valuable silver, copper, silicon, aluminum, and glass. A new Texas solar recycling plant aims to recover nearly all of it without sending partially processed materials overseas.
We Recycle Solar (WRS) says it will open what it describes as the first US end-to-end critical-materials recovery plant dedicated to retired solar panels in Q3 2027.
The 10-acre facility outside Dallas will process one panel per minute and recover up to 96% of its materials, according to the Yuma, Arizona-based company. Those materials will then be cleaned and prepared for sale back into US supply chains.
That last part matters. Conventional solar recycling generally focuses on the aluminum frame and glass, which make up most of a panel’s weight but aren’t its most valuable parts. Recovering smaller amounts of silver, copper, and silicon in a usable form is more complicated and expensive.
Solar panel recycling is already happening in the US, but it typically costs more than sending panels to a landfill. Improving the recovery of high-value materials could close that gap while reducing the need for newly mined materials.
WRS says its proprietary process will recover silver, copper, silicon, aluminum, and glass at commercial scale without requiring downstream smelting at an overseas facility. The resulting materials could be reused in solar equipment, electronics, the grid, and other US industries.
“Solar panels contain the exact critical materials the US supply chain desperately needs, but until now, no American company has been able to recover their full resources at such scale or efficiency,” said Adam Saghei, founder and CEO of We Recycle Solar. “Through our advanced process, we are achieving true, comprehensive material recovery entirely on US soil, and retaining these critical materials – and the value currently being lost to Asian processing – within our domestic supply chain.”
A lot more solar waste is coming
Most US solar panels are nowhere near retirement. The US Department of Energy says about 70% of the world’s solar projects have been installed since 2019, and panels now typically remain in service for 25 to 35 years.
But with hundreds of millions of panels already operating across the US, the volume reaching the end of its useful life will climb sharply over the next several decades. Weather damage, installation problems, and the early replacement of older panels with more efficient models will add to that stream.
WRS says it has already diverted more than 1 million panels from landfills through its existing decommissioning, recycling, resale, and remarketing operations.
The Dallas-area plant is intended to be the first in a larger network. WRS plans to invest around $100 million in four additional US facilities over the next four years, although it hasn’t yet disclosed their locations.
Read more: US solar can now power 50M homes – and red states led the boom
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