@denmacken@jonkay@TomTSEC Misuse of disabled parking is a serious problem. I once reported a Canada Post truck who blocked at least 3 spots in front of a medical clinic.
Billions of solar panels are nearing their end-of-life cycle, and the world is completely unprepared for the coming toxic avalanche.
By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects up to 78 million metric tons of useless and toxic solar e-waste. Where is it all going to go?
The industry boasts that solar panels are '95% recyclable'. Technically, yes - because they are made of glass, aluminum and copper. But economics always trumps physics. In Australia and the US, it costs roughly $20 to $40 to disassemble and recycle a single panel, but only around $4 to dump it in landfill.
Because there is no financial incentive, up to 90% of decommissioned panels go straight into the ground. There are between 7 and 8 billion solar panels in the world today. This milestone was reached as global solar capacity officially surpassed 2 Terawatts (TW).
Because the physical wattage of individual panels varies from small 300W residential rooftop modules to massive 600W utility-scale panels, 2 TW of total energy capacity translates to roughly 7 billion individual panels currently installed worldwide.
Each solar panel is an industrial 'sandwich' bound tightly by heavy polymers. To extract the microscopic amounts of valuable silver and high-purity silicon requires energy-intensive chemical and thermal baking.
When they are crushed or left to fracture in landfills, heavy metals like lead and cadmium (in thin-film technologies) can leach into the surrounding soil and groundwater, turning 'clean energy' into a multi-generational hazardous waste problem.
The crisis is accelerating faster than models predicted. Because solar cells degrade and lose efficiency, and newer, cheaper panels hit the market, consumers and solar farms are ripping out functional systems at least a decade early to upgrade.
This compressed lifecycle destroys the narrative of a long-term, stable asset and creates an endless loop of unrecyclable industrial trash.
@M3othra012@its_The_Dr Dr Patrick Moore holds advanced degrees in Ecology and Forestry. He’s definitely smarter than all those climate scientists who scream about climate change.