New Jersey has six facilities authorized to accept end-of-life solar panels. Only one is recycling them.
That gap is shaping how the state implements S3399, the mandatory solar panel recycling law then-Gov. Phil Murphy signed Jan. 12.
Diane Gard, chief of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) Bureau of Recycling and Hazardous Waste Management, said the agency is finishing internal comments on rule amendments that would classify solar panels as a universal waste and a Class D recyclable material. The package goes to legal review next.
“For any new state regulators, you know how slow that can go,” Gard said during a panel at E-Scrap Conference 2026 in New Orleans on Oct. 26 moderated by Scott Cassel, CEO and founder of the Product Stewardship Institute (PSI).
After legal review, the amendments will be published for public comment. Adoption typically follows about a year after publication, and heavy comment volume could push it out further, Gard said.
Until then, New Jersey has no permitted solar panel recyclers. Older panels that fail toxicity characteristic leaching procedure (TCLP) testing are going to hazardous waste landfills or sitting in warehouses until the universal waste designation takes effect, Gard said.
A stopgap on a clock
To bridge the gap, NJDEP created a research, development and demonstration (RD&D) framework that lets Class D recycling facilities in good standing receive panels. The authorizations cover non-hazardous panels only and require TCLP testing.
Each runs one year and can be renewed for up to five years or until final rules are adopted, whichever comes first. The first RD&Ds were issued in 2024, and several facilities are approaching their third year.
Of the six authorized sites, Phillipsburg-based Commercial Solar Panel Recycling (CSPR) is the only one recycling, Gard said. Four operate as transfer stations that send panels to CSPR. The sixth ships panels to one of its own facilities out of state. Authorized facilities collected 107 tons last year.
S3399 requires the owner, producer, distributor or manufacturer of solar equipment to remove and recycle or refurbish it once it’s taken out of service. Before NJDEP can begin solar-specific rulemaking, the agency must evaluate whether recycling facilities are available and accessible in the state and publish its findings in the New Jersey Register. Gard said she isn’t certain the current footprint will meet that definition.
The law also doesn’t say who pays. S3399 was not written as an extended producer responsibility (EPR) law, but Gard said it leaves room for a producer responsibility approach and that EPR “is not off the table.” The department hasn’t discussed funding.
S3399 made New Jersey the first state to pass a mandatory solar panel recycling law without an EPR framework.
Regulators are weighing what happened in Washington, she said. “We don’t want to slow that growth in New Jersey.”
Back to the drawing board
Washington passed the nation’s first solar panel EPR law in 2017. Rather than comply, some manufacturers stopped selling panels in the state, according to the Washington Department of Ecology. Gard said only one panel manufacturer sells there.
Lawmakers delayed the program again in 2025 through SB 5175, moving the date manufacturers need an Ecology-approved stewardship plan to sell in Washington to Jan. 31, 2031. Subject to funding, Ecology expects an advisory committee to start work in November 2027 and must send the Legislature recommended changes by Dec. 1, 2028.
The country’s other solar EPR law is local. Niagara County, NY, adopted Local Law No. 4 in 2021 with drafting help from PSI, requiring manufacturers selling panels in the county to comply beginning Aug. 1, 2022. Cassel said the county’s history with Love Canal motivated lawmakers.
Two other states regulate end-of-life panels without EPR:
- North Carolina: Session Law 2023-58 requires decommissioning plans and financial assurance for utility-scale solar projects of 2 megawatts AC or more. A separate 2023 law, H600, bars photovoltaic modules from unlined landfills starting Dec. 1, 2026.
- Texas: HB 3228 requires wind and solar leases signed on or after Sept. 1, 2025, to cover removal, recycling and land restoration. HB 3229 requires renewable energy component recyclers to report stockpiles to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality annually and post financial assurance. TCEQ adopted implementing rules in September, with first reports due Jan. 15, 2027.
Federal action isn’t coming soon, Gard said. She served on an EPA workgroup that considered adding solar panels to the federal universal waste rule, but the federal government “moves very slowly” and the current climate still favors fossil fuels. If federal rules do pass, states can be more stringent but not less.
Repowering drives early volume
Sarah Damaskos, managing director of CSPR, said much of the material reaching recyclers now comes from early losses rather than panels at the end of a 20- to 25-year warranty.
Re-roofing, storms, forklift damage, abandoned systems and ownership disputes all pull panels out early. The most consequential is repowering, in which owners replace working panels with more efficient ones because incentives make the swap pay off within a couple of years.
Damaskos said CSPR has fielded repowering inquiries ranging from 150 panels to 700,000.
That doesn’t guarantee resale value. One current CSPR repowering project involves panels with a defective backsheet, which makes remarketing them difficult. Panels under roughly 300 watts have little resale value, though secondary buyers exist in agriculture, off-grid and international markets. Those sales are generally without warranty, and tariffs are shifting global demand “week by week,” Damaskos said.
Glass makes up about 77% of a crystalline silicon panel by weight, according to Department of Energy figures Damaskos cited. Crystalline panels hold about 97% of the market.
She said some companies that claim to recycle panels only pull the aluminum frames and dump the glass, recovering about 10% of the panel. CSPR is targeting 95% to 96%. The company sells recovered glass as pavers, sandblasting media and an epoxy additive, and is developing a concrete additive, fiberglass and a foam aggregate. CSPR does not export intact panels to Asia for critical mineral recovery, which Damaskos called largely unregulated.
The biggest factor pushing owners to recycle isn’t regulation, she said. It’s reputational risk, which she compared to the legacy of cathode ray tubes (CRTs).
“They’re more worried about somebody finding out that they could have recycled pretty easily and they didn’t,” Damaskos said.
Lessons from other states
Rules vary widely by state. In Vermont, Damaskos said, residential panels discarded by homeowners are treated as household waste.
Matt Flechter, recycling market development specialist at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, said the state added one question to its requests for proposals for grants that fund solar installations: “What’s your end-of-life plan?” That alone sent applicants to recyclers, he said.
Eric Flesch, E-Cycle Wisconsin coordinator at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, said the state exempts some panels from household hazardous waste rules when contractors haul directly to a landfill. Because panels are heavy, landfilling often costs less than recycling even with grant support, he said.
Gard described a utility that has been replacing solar panels on traffic signals. Every panel failed TCLP testing and is headed to a hazardous waste landfill. The utility has asked NJDEP to let it remove the aluminum frames first to cut shipping weight and recover the metal, and the agency is working with it on a solution.
Her advice for regulators drafting solar bills: write definitions broad enough to cover future chemistries and technologies, and pair disposal bans with the start of a working recycling program.
“It has been said, no ban without a plan,” Gard said. “But we should all be thinking about adding landfill bans.”
