Solar waste smuggling: The PV recycling problem kicking the industry while it’s down

The sometimes illegal export of damaged and broken solar panels is causing added supply chain headaches for Australia’s nascent PV recycling industry, which is already struggling to survive the long-delayed pilot that it hopes will deliver a federal government-mandated national scheme. 

Australia is not shipping off as many end-of-life solar panels as it was before legislative changes and plunging prices made doing so less significantly less attractive. But it is still going on, says PV Industries cofounder James Petesic, and it’s adding to the woes of the local solar waste management economy.

That’s because, despite reports of used and damaged solar modules piling up in landfills and suburban back yards, Australia’s nascent solar recycling industry is struggling to secure enough feedstock – panels – to survive.

“We are on the coalface of this industry and seeing where we’re losing panels to,” Petesic said on the Solar Insiders podcast.

“When we speak to installers, more often than not the response, particularly two years ago, was ‘I’m sorry, I’ve already got someone that gives me $5 a panel, $10 a panel, whatever figure they were getting paid.

“And when we asked the installer where they were going, it was always offshore.” 

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

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. 

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

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. 

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. 

Solar recyclers are now stuck in a holding pattern.

“We are able to tread water, we’re able to stay alive, and we’re an okay business,” Petesic says of his company, PV Industries. “We’re not losing copious amounts of money, and our future isn’t threatened tomorrow.

“But if it goes on for too many months or years, then we are unable to secure any form of meaningful investment, we’re unable to grow in a meaningful way, and we’re 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. 

“So, yeah, without stewardship, whether it be a pilot or a full-blown scheme, we don’t have feedstock certainty, and without that, we aren’t able to make sound investment decisions or grow the business in any sort of meaningful way.”

Exports, and smuggling, persist

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.

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

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.

Australia only gives export permits for hazardous waste that can’t be dealt with in country, and allows exports of panels that can still be used.

But ‘reusable’ 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.

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

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

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.

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.

“There’s more panels in the market, so we’re getting more panels, or it is that less of these operators are out there getting panels and sending them overseas to developing nations,” he says. 

“Anecdotally, I would say we’ve seen that practice halve. 

“We still do see quite often with installers that we speak to [that they] sell their panels to an individual that’s 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.”

Exporters now demand unbroken panels, and the extra labour of sorting through a pile of panels is pushing some installers towards local recyclers. 

“We are also seeing installers, I wouldn’t say wake up to the fact because it’s a bit harsh, but come to terms with the fact that they’re still able to make their on a panel,” Petesic says.

“Although rather than selling it to an individual for , we charge our fee [and they] put a margin on it [via a] service to their customer, so they’re still able to take a clip along the way.”

But this will-they-won’t-they supply chain isn’t enough to convince investors that solar recycling is viable enough to put money into. 

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. 

“Guarantee feedstock, and at that point we would have a completely different conversation with investors,” he says. 

“Our prices being

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

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

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.

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.

“There’s more panels in the market, so we’re getting more panels, or it is that less of these operators are out there getting panels and sending them overseas to developing nations,” he says. 

“Anecdotally, I would say we’ve seen that practice halve. 

“We still do see quite often with installers that we speak to [that they] sell their panels to an individual that’s 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.”

Exporters now demand unbroken panels, and the extra labour of sorting through a pile of panels is pushing some installers towards local recyclers. 

“We are also seeing installers, I wouldn’t say wake up to the fact because it’s a bit harsh, but come to terms with the fact that they’re still able to make their $5 on a panel,” Petesic says.

“Although 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’re still able to take a clip along the way.”

But this will-they-won’t-they supply chain isn’t enough to convince investors that solar recycling is viable enough to put money into. 

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. 

“Guarantee feedstock, and at that point we would have a completely different conversation with investors,” he says. 

“Our prices being $0 at the door, we would see less panels going offshore. So it’s a bit of a double barrel approach where not only are panels free, so we’d get more of them, but we’d also get more of them because it’s more competitive when you compare it with offshore export. 

“So we’d receive not only a greater share of panels that are here, but we’d stop panels leaking from the system as well.”

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at the door, we would see less panels going offshore. So it’s a bit of a double barrel approach where not only are panels free, so we’d get more of them, but we’d also get more of them because it’s more competitive when you compare it with offshore export. 

“So we’d receive not only a greater share of panels that are here, but we’d stop panels leaking from the system as well.”

To join more than 29,000 others and get the latest clean energy news delivered straight to your inbox, for free, click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter.