Old solar panels become bricks and filters at a Gauteng recycling plant
Reclite SA expects to recover about 10,000 tonnes of panels this year, years earlier than forecast, turning their glass into material for local manufacturing.
Germiston — South Africa's first wave of worn-out solar panels is arriving sooner than expected, and a recycling plant in Germiston, Gauteng, is turning them into raw material for local industry, Daily Maverick reported.
Electronic and hazardous waste recycler Reclite SA is on track to recover about 10,000 tonnes of solar panels this year, a volume that had been forecast only from 2033. Panels are wearing out faster partly because South Africa has some of the most intense sunlight on Earth, and storm damage plays a role too.
Glass into new products
Glass makes up 60-70% of a panel's weight and is the easiest part to recover. At the plant, workers feed panels through a machine that removes the frame without breaking the glass. The glass is then smoothed and turned into blasting and filtration products, coatings and building materials such as bricks, or ground into a fine powder used as a filler.
"A solar panel contains materials that local industries can use. Our job is to recover them at the required quality and at a cost that makes the process commercially viable," said managing director Steffen Schröder.
A growing resource
Estimates presented at the WasteCon 2026 conference put South Africa's solar panel waste at more than 500,000 tonnes between 2043 and 2048. "This creates both a waste management burden and a resource opportunity," said Professor Suzan Oelofse of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.
Source: Daily Maverick, 12 November 2026.
