Today’s waste is tomorrow’s resources.
A solar panel is not simply waste.
It is a manufactured product containing glass, aluminium, silicon, copper, silver, polymers and other materials that required energy and resources to produce.
When renewable-energy equipment reaches the end of its useful life, our objective is to keep as much value as practically possible within the circular economy.
Our recovery hierarchy.
Reuse first.
Where equipment has legitimate remaining useful life and can be safely returned to service, reuse can deliver greater environmental value than immediately destroying it for its raw materials.
Resolve therefore aims to identify opportunities for appropriate reuse and repurposing before recycling.
Recover what cannot be reused.
Equipment that has genuinely reached end of life is sorted and prepared for specialist downstream material recovery.
Through our downstream partnerships, the objective is to recover useful materials and reduce the amount of renewable-energy equipment being unnecessarily landfilled or stockpiled.
Build markets for recovered resources.
Recycling only works when recovered materials have somewhere useful to go.
Our longer-term objective is therefore larger than collecting panels.
Resolve wants to participate in building a genuine circular supply chain connecting:
identification
sorting
transport
processing
recovered materials
new uses
Our partnership with Pan Pacific Recycling.
Resolve Global is developing its renewable resource recovery model in partnership with Pan Pacific Recycling and its Chief Technology Officer, John Hill.
Pan Pacific brings specialist solar-panel recycling and material-recovery capability, while Resolve provides a regional collection, recording, sorting, aggregation and logistics pathway for renewable-energy waste.
It is a complementary relationship.
Resolve’s role is to help get renewable equipment out of sheds, warehouses, installation sites, businesses and communities and into an accountable recovery pathway.
Pan Pacific’s specialist processing capability provides a pathway for suitable end-of-life panels to be broken back down into recoverable material streams.
Together, the objective is to help create a more complete chain between the place a solar panel finishes its working life and the place its materials begin another one.
Parts and second life.
Not everything that arrives at Resolve has reached the end of its useful life.
As our operations develop, we intend to identify suitable components and equipment that may have legitimate second-life applications.
This may include selected:
- solar panels
- inverters
- mounting components
- electrical components
- renewable-energy equipment and parts.
Safety, condition, suitability and applicable regulatory requirements will always determine whether equipment is appropriate for reuse.
Nothing renewable should unnecessarily end its life in landfill.
That is the principle behind Resolve.