Financing the recycling of long life products under extended producer responsibility -a case study of PV

This paper presents an estimation of the quantities of WEEE arising for the Solar PV waste stream in Ireland up to the year 2050. Solar PV will be a new WEEE waste stream in Ireland, one which has a significantly longer lifetime compared to the majority of other WEEE streams. As such, the Solar PV WEEE recycling operations and considerations need to be financed. Estimations of the quantities of WEEE arising into the future will be essential for such financing decisions to be made at the present time. The work presented in this research estimates the quantities of Solar PV arising across both residential and commercial installations for Ireland up to the year 2050. It also discusses some of the options available to finance the recycling of this waste stream under an extended producer responsibility framework.