{"id":818508,"date":"2026-07-23T10:19:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T10:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/818508\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T10:19:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T10:19:17","slug":"solar-smuggling-illegal-exports-of-broken-panels-is-killing-the-pv-recycling-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/818508\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar smuggling: Illegal exports of broken panels is killing the PV recycling industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sometimes illegal export of damaged and broken solar panels is causing added headaches for Australia\u2019s nascent PV recycling industry, which is already struggling to survive as it awaits a long-delayed pilot scheme that it hopes will support the industry.<\/p>\n

Australia has succeeded in reducing the number of end-of-life solar panels shipped off to other countries, thanks to legislative changes and plunging prices. But it is still going on, says James Petesic, a co-founder of solar recycling company PV Industries, and it\u2019s adding to the woes of the local solar waste management industry.<\/p>\n

Petesic says that \u2013 despite reports of used and damaged solar modules piling up in landfills and suburban back yards \u2013 the solar recycling industry is struggling to secure enough panels to survive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are on the coalface of this industry and seeing where we\u2019re losing panels to,\u201d Petesic said in the latest episode of Renew Economy\u2019s Solar Insiders podcast.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we speak to installers, more often than not the response, particularly two years ago, was \u2018I\u2019m sorry, I\u2019ve already got someone that gives me $5 a panel, $10 a panel, whatever figure they were getting paid.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when we asked the installer where they were going, it was always offshore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the absence of a stewardship scheme, or at the very least the long promised and now suspended solar recycling pilot<\/a>, Petesic says the biggest threat to the struggling industry is exports, because he\u2019s still seeing valuable PV feedstock leaking overseas.<\/p>\n

In most states, end-of-life panels are still being diverted to landfills, stockpiled in the hopes of a stewardship scheme appearing one day, crushed up indiscriminately to be added to building materials, or exported.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The recycling pilot is supposed to solve these problems by paying for old panels and setting up 100 collection spots around the country. <\/p>\n

The goal is to make it more financially viable and convenient to recycle, as well as to sort out the sort of frustrating logistics and transport issues that plague the recycling industry across the board.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pilot was supposed to start now, but was suspended in mid-May after a complaint about the process of choosing an administrator for the scheme.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Solar recyclers are now stuck in a holding pattern.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are able to tread water, we\u2019re able to stay alive, and we\u2019re an okay business,\u201d Petesic says of his company, PV Industries. \u201cWe\u2019re not losing copious amounts of money, and our future isn\u2019t threatened tomorrow. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut if it goes on for too many months or years, then we are unable to secure any form of meaningful investment, we\u2019re unable to grow in a meaningful way, and we\u2019re unable to hit those levels of feedstock that we need to become a viable business and a successful one that can begin to thrive in Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, yeah, without stewardship, whether it be a pilot or a full-blown scheme, we don\u2019t have feedstock certainty, and without that, we aren\u2019t able to make sound investment decisions or grow the business in any sort of meaningful way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exports, and smuggling, persist<\/p>\n

Exporting to low and middle income countries in Africa or Asia was once the norm for broken and end-of-life solar panels from Australia.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Queensland alone was exporting as many as 800,000 panels a year<\/a> before it launched the first recycling trial, Smart Energy Council stewardship program manager Robyn Cowie said at the time.<\/p>\n

But changes to a Basel convention that restricts countries from dumping waste in developing nations came in on January 1, 2025. Combined with the plunging price of panels this has eroded, but not entirely killed off, the export industry.<\/p>\n

Australia only gives export permits for hazardous waste that can\u2019t be dealt with in country, and allows exports of panels that can still be used.<\/p>\n

But \u2018reusable\u2019 means undergoing the same testing as a new panel and packaged up as new. Petesic says most of these so-called reusable panels are stuffed into containers with no padding as they are actually destined to become e-waste.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The left image is a container owner by Weeebytes in Melbourne. The right image is one of the containers uncovered by Australian Border Force during Oper<\/p>\n

In February this year, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water (DCCEEW) fined a Melbourne-based recycling company $20,000<\/a> after the Singapore government intercepted one its containers and found broken solar panels.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Australian Border Force revealed what it found during a global export crackdown last year alongside INTERPOL and Europol, with solar panels and inverters making up two of the four main categories of waste smuggled out of Australia. <\/p>\n

Petesic says the regulatory changes and collapse in PV prices are improving feedstock flows to recyclers, but that exports offer a backdoor out of Australia that the industry needs closed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s more panels in the market, so we\u2019re getting more panels, or it is that less of these operators are out there getting panels and sending them overseas to developing nations,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnecdotally, I would say we\u2019ve seen that practice halve.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still do see quite often with installers that we speak to [that they] sell their panels to an individual that\u2019s undertaking these practices. However, what we have also seen is their willingness to engage with them has reduced because the threshold for what they will receive has increased.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exporters now demand unbroken panels, and the extra labour of sorting through a pile of panels is pushing some installers towards local recyclers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are also seeing installers, I wouldn\u2019t say wake up to the fact because it\u2019s a bit harsh, but come to terms with the fact that they\u2019re still able to make their $5 on a panel,\u201d Petesic says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough rather than selling it to an individual for $5, we charge our fee [and they] put a $5 margin on it [via a] service to their customer, so they\u2019re still able to take a clip along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this will-they-won\u2019t-they supply chain isn\u2019t enough to convince investors that solar recycling is viable enough to put money into.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Petesic, like all solar recyclers right now, says the industry needs the pilot and a stewardship scheme to divert feedstock away from exporters and landfills and guarantee a supply coming in the door.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGuarantee feedstock, and at that point we would have a completely different conversation with investors,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur prices being $0 at the door, we would see less panels going offshore. So it\u2019s a bit of a double barrel approach where not only are panels free, so we\u2019d get more of them, but we\u2019d also get more of them because it\u2019s more competitive when you compare it with offshore export.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019d receive not only a greater share of panels that are here, but we\u2019d stop panels leaking from the system as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

To join more than 29,000 others and get the latest clean energy news delivered straight to your inbox, for free,\u00a0click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Rachel Williamson is a science and business journalist, who focuses on climate change-related health and environmental issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sometimes illegal export of damaged and broken solar panels is causing added headaches for Australia\u2019s nascent PV…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128,153318],"class_list":["post-818508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-solar-panel-recycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}