The rooftop solar revolution has slashed power bills and emissions, but behind the good news story is a growing waste problem. The industry is sounding the alarm, warning Australia is about to be hit with a wave of solar waste as more households take up batteries thanks to federal government subsidies.
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00:00At the moment, the cost and logistical challenges that are involved with recycling solar panels
00:11are too great for consumers and solar installers.
00:15So we do have seven active solar recyclers here in Australia at the moment, but several
00:24have gone bust in recent years, and that's because there's not a constant supply of solar
00:31panels that can be recycled.
00:33So what's happening at the moment is that the industry is being undercut by scrap metal
00:39dealers and also by exporters that actually pay consumers and installers for the panels,
00:48whereas the solar recyclers can't afford to do that.
00:51Well, there seems to be a pretty united industry on this front.
00:54They say that the solution is simple and long overdue, and that is for the federal government
01:00to get on with introducing a national product stewardship scheme for solar panels.
01:07Now, basically what that means is it's a mandatory national recycling scheme, which would raise
01:14money by charging a levy on importers and manufacturers of solar panels, and that money would then
01:20go into a fund, which would help make recycling solar panels more viable, because at the moment
01:27there's quite a big gap there.
01:30Now, the industry has been waiting almost a decade for this to happen.
01:34The federal government has done a lot of talking about this, but we're yet to see them commit
01:39to a time line.