NSW already has solar panel recycling facilities and collection points, but the State Government wants to make responsibility for discarded panels mandatory as the volume of solar waste increases.
The NSW Government has opened consultation on a proposed mandatory product stewardship scheme that would require businesses supplying solar panels into the state to participate in an approved stewardship arrangement.
Under the proposed regulation, responsibility for panels would extend beyond their sale and installation to their collection, recycling and resource recovery at the end of their useful life.
The NSW Environment Protection Authority said about 14,000 tonnes of solar panel waste was currently generated in the state each year, with that figure forecast to reach 89,000 tonnes by 2045.
More than 1.18 million rooftop solar systems have already been installed across NSW homes, businesses, schools and community facilities.
Read the NSW EPA announcement here.
Recycling infrastructure already exists
The proposal would not be starting from scratch.
There are two dedicated solar panel recycling facilities operating in NSW: PV Industries at Bankstown and Sircel at Parkes.
PV Industries’ Bankstown Airport facility officially opened in October 2025 with capacity to process up to 6,000 tonnes, or about 200,000 panels, each year.
Its Deframer and Deglasser technologies can recover up to 90 per cent of a solar panel by weight, according to the EPA.
Six collection points have also been established across NSW, including sites in Newcastle and Maitland as well as Bankstown, Dubbo, Thornleigh and the Central Coast.
Sircel’s Parkes facility has also been commissioned and is ramping up processing. The EPA said in October 2025 that it was targeting capacity of 160,000 solar panels, or 3,500 tonnes, a year.
Read the NSW EPA information about the recycling facilities here.
Hunter helped test the collection model
The Hunter has already played a role in developing the system needed to get discarded panels from households and businesses to recyclers.
PV Industries received funding through the NSW EPA’s Circular Solar program for a trial involving local governments, waste managers, installers, industry bodies, researchers and manufacturers.
The project established a distributed collection and logistics network for metropolitan and regional NSW.
The work was designed to test practical issues including safe handling and transport, processing methods, markets for recovered glass and opportunities to reuse panels rather than immediately recycle them.
The subsequent expansion of PV Industries’ network brought collection points to both Newcastle and Maitland.
PV Industries later received a further $2.37 million through the Circular Solar program to increase its processing capacity and expand its metropolitan and regional collection and logistics network.
Read about the NSW EPA Circular Solar projects here.
Newcastle researchers target the valuable material inside panels
While collection and processing capacity is one part of the problem, University of Newcastle researchers are working on another: improving the economics of recovering valuable materials from discarded panels.
Researchers from the University’s Centre for Critical Minerals and Urban Mining have scaled up a process that uses froth flotation, a mineral-processing technique widely used by the mining industry, to recover silver from solar-cell material.
In a pilot-scale trial announced in August, the team processed 22 kilograms of solar-cell material recovered from about 460 kilograms of end-of-life panels.
The University said almost 100 per cent of the silver was recovered and concentrated into a product representing just 1.25 per cent of the original material, with more than 80 times the original silver concentration.
The researchers’ preliminary economic assessment suggested the flotation process could be three to five times less expensive than conventional acid-leaching approaches.
Those figures remain research findings rather than demonstrated commercial recycling costs, but the work is addressing a recognised problem for the industry: recycling a panel can cost more than sending it to landfill.
Associate Professor Mahshid Firouzi, Deputy Director of the Centre for Critical Minerals and Urban Mining, said the next challenge was making material recovery commercially viable.
“At the moment, recycling often costs more than landfill. But if recyclers can efficiently recover and sell the silver contained within solar panels, that changes the economics completely.”
Read the University of Newcastle research here.
Proposed scheme targets the next wave of waste
The proposed NSW scheme would change who pays for managing panels once they reach the end of their useful lives.
The EPA intends to appoint a product stewardship organisation to administer the scheme. Where an administration agreement is in place, businesses supplying regulated panels into NSW would be required to participate.
The proposed regulation covers rooftop and utility-scale photovoltaic panels entering NSW, although portable solar panels, batteries, inverters, cables and racking are outside its scope.
The Government is also seeking feedback on how NSW could develop recycling, remanufacturing and manufacturing industries using materials recovered from old panels, including glass, aluminium, silicon, copper and silver.
That work is already underway in the Hunter: collection infrastructure has been tested locally, Newcastle and Maitland have collection points, and University of Newcastle researchers are investigating how more value can be recovered from the materials inside discarded panels.
Submissions on the draft regulation and accompanying issues paper close at 5 pm on Monday 16 November 2026.
