Most of the time, when we hear of recycling, we think of things that we’ve been taught in school - putting paper into recycling bins and keeping plastic out of landfills. However, even though those are important, there are tons of other things that get recycled every day to help the planet. For example, recycling centers always recycle electronic waste, which comes from old computers and other devices. At ReCharged, we also help to recycle this waste by donating electronics to families in need rather than scrapping everything for parts. More examples of things that get recycled every day are solar panels and glass, both of which require their own methods and equipment to recycle.

Recycling Glass

Recycling glass is a fairly simple process. First, the glass is collected, separated from other materials, and cleaned in order to ensure that it is not contaminated. After that, the glass is simply just crushed into pieces, mixed with soda ash and limestone (or other raw materials), and melted, and formed into new glassware, which is then sold. The entire process is simple and helpful to both the environment and the glass supply, which helps lower prices for us. However, there are a few problems. For one, there are tons of items in recycling bins, and the sorting process can easily miss small glass shards that can then contaminate other materials. As well as that, not all glass is recyclable - things like electronic screens, heat-resistant glass, and lightbulbs all have other materials inside the glass, which helps with the product but not with the recycling process.

Recycling Solar Panels

Unlike glassware, solar panels are fairly complicated and, as a result, difficult to recycle. When solar panels get older, they are no longer useful, but they still contain very useful materials that can be resold and reused in new panels, helping the environment by saving resources and having more clean energy. A big part of a solar panel is just glass, which can be separated and recycled easily. However, after removing the frame and separating the glass, solar panels have a lot of valuable resources like copper, lead, batteries, and silver, but can be toxic due to the small amounts of lead and cadmium inside it. Even though a lot of these parts already have recycling industries that can handle it, some materials might be incinerated. Better solutions will come, as recycling solar panels is still a new thing, but it will become very important in the future as all of our solar panels age.