[A forklift truck taking decommissioned solar panels into We Recycle Solar facility]
[Workers inspecting decommissioned solar panels to refurbish or recycle them]
[Adam Saghei, CEO of We Recycle Solar, at recycling facility]
Adam Saghei (interview): “So, what inspired us to start We Recycle Solar was a huge problem. As solar is a great technology, it is now becoming more and more accessible to everyone, there was no planning for end of life. And with secondary markets, with US’s supply chain woes, we knew we could find a way to take those raw materials and these assets and give them new life.”
[A worker doing initial testing of decommissioned solar panels, lifting it with vacuum arm to look at solar panel’s condition]
[Decommissioned solar panels being tested]
Adam Saghei (interview): “We don’t want to go to the landfill. That’s the last thing that we want to do. There’s still life left in them. They’re 25 to 30 years. At the end of the day, someone else’s trash is someone else’s treasure. That we’re able to refurbish and re-market that and get it to a place where an underserved community can take advantage of that.”
[Decommissioned solar panels waiting outside the facility to be processed]
Adam Saghei (interview): “So, as they go down through our lines, we look to go through resale as the first step. Anything that doesn’t qualify for resale, we then send down to our recycling lines. That material is dismantled. The frames come off, it goes through secondary machinery where mechanically, the process takes over and they separate different (components, such as) glass, the silicon, the back sheet, silver, cabling, etc.”
[We Recycle Solar facility]
[Workers next to a solar panel recycling machine]
[A machine crushing solar panels to separate different components for recycling]
Adam Saghei (interview): “Every product today that you see within the US supply chain is heavily mined, is heavily sourced, and often disrupts the ecosystems, all around the world. So, why not take it from existing products, extract those raw materials and put them back into use?”
[A conveyor belt carrying glass taken from solar panels]
[Crushed glass from solar panels on a belt]
[A We Recycle Solar worker looking at buckets with recycled glass]
[Big Bear Commercial Blasting founder Erick Speiginer next to a truck receiving sack full of recycled glass from We Recycle Solar for sandblasting job]
[Workers filling a bucket with recycled glass]
[A worker feeding sandblasting machine with recycled glass for blasting job]
[Speiginer watching workers feeding sandblasting machine]
Erick Speiginer (interview): “We believe at Big Bear that being responsible and using a product that would potentially end up in a landfill, we think it’s responsible to take it and use it in a recycled form for our industry. And we just think it’s the right thing to do.”
[Big Bear Commercial Blasting worker putting on a suit to do blasting job]
[A worker blasting a crane with recycled glass]
Erick Speiginer (interview): “If the glass is being made specifically for our industry, opposed to something that has already been used, and then is being repurposed in our industry, it’s going to be a lot more expensive to have the new glass than it is the recycled.”
[A Worker blasting a crane ]
[A crane after a blasting job]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.