Glass makes up 62% to 70% of a solar panel’s weight, and as much as 80% of a bifacial module with glass on both faces. That single number explains most of what is wrong with solar panel recycling in the United States. The aluminum frame and the silver contacts are worth money. The glass mostly is not, so common practice is to pull the frame, shred everything behind it, and sell the mixed output as low-grade sandblasting grit or landfill cover. The EPA projects the country could accumulate up to 10 million metric tons of end-of-life panels by 2050, second only to China — roughly 393 million modules. And they are retiring now, not in 2050: broken during construction, shattered by hail, or pulled down in year 10 when a utility swaps a 200-watt module for an 800-watt one and quadruples output from the same land.

Our guest is Brett Henderson, co-founder and CEO of SolarPanelRecycling.com, or SPR. The company owns and operates plants in North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, with a fourth opening in California this year, each built to run about a million panels a year and to scale to 3 million within six months when needed. SPR is a Solar Energy Industries Association-approved national recycler and partnered with SEIA on the first residential panel drop-off program in the country. Brett came to solar after 18 years in electronics recycling at Powerhouse Recycling, SPR’s parent company, and the business started in 2018 with a call from a longtime utility client that had 10,000 panels coming out of a power plant and nowhere to send them.

Brett is blunt about the economics: recycling a panel is a negative value proposition, because a panel is mostly glass and glass is cheap. What SPR sells is risk mitigation. Federal rules treat an end-of-life panel as hazardous until testing proves otherwise, most owners have no idea what is inside the modules they bought, and a utility loading thousands of them onto trucks takes on generator liability and Department of Transportation exposure. Aluminum and silver recovery subsidizes the rest. That cost has fallen 42% in 36 months at SPR, driven by rebuilt separation lines and steadier volume rather than any subsidy, and scale is what opens the end markets — a manufacturer will not retool a line for recycled glass cullet until a supplier can promise something like 160 tons of it every other week.

He is equally candid about the limits. Solar wafers require polysilicon at 6N purity, 99.9999%, and recovered silicon does not reach that grade at a price anyone will pay. The recovered glass is clean enough for foundries, but not for new module glass. A panel, in other words, does not yet close its own loop, and the discipline that matters is clean separation, sending each material to its best destination. He also points out the challenges in reusing early-retirement panels: utility-scale modules are too large for most rooftops, and a module’s UL listing lapses once it leaves its original application, which complicates putting it back on the grid.

On policy, Brett would take landfill bans plus bonding and insurance requirements at project permitting over extended producer responsibility. Washington’s producer takeback law is his cautionary example: enacted in 2017, its compliance deadline has slipped to 2031 after only one manufacturer filed an approved plan. Meanwhile SPR is financing capacity ahead of the wave, largely off its parent company’s balance sheet, so it will not have to turn away million-panel repowers while it builds. IRENA and IEA-PVPS estimate the materials in retired panels could be worth more than $15 billion globally by 2050, enough to build 2 billion new ones. Somebody has to build the receiving end of that system first. Learn more about SPR’s facilities and research at solarpanelrecycling.com — that’s all one word, no space, no dash.

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Interview Transcript

Mitch Ratcliffe (0:11)

Hello. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Today, we’re going to look at what happens when the clean energy grid ages out.

The United States has installed millions of solar panels, and we tend to treat them as though they’re all 30-year promises. Put them on a roof or in a field, reap the sun’s energy for decades, and the waste question belongs to, well, somebody who lives in the 2050s. But the data says otherwise. Panels are leaving service right now, broken during construction, shattered by hail or hurricanes, or pulled down in their first decade because the utility that owns them wants to repower. In other words, to put new, higher-efficiency modules in place because they pay better, and, in fact, it’s much more profitable than waiting to upgrade. So you swap a 200-watt panel for an 800-watt module, and you quadruple the output from the same land, which is why perfectly functional panels are coming to be retired by year 10.

And the EPA expects the country to accumulate as much as 1 million tons of solar panel waste annually by 2030, and as much as 10 million tons by 2050, the second-largest stockpile of end-of-life panels in the world. China is out front. Most of what passes for solar panel recycling today involves peeling off the aluminum frame and shredding everything else. Glass accounts for 62% to 70% of a standard panel’s weight, and as much as 80% of a two-sided module, and it is typically used as low-grade sandblasting grit or landfill cover instead of going back into a furnace and on to be reused in a new panel. The silver and silicon, while small in weight but large in value, disappear in that mix, and they’re lost for further use.

The International Energy Agency’s Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme estimates that recovering end-of-life panel materials and re-injecting them into the economy could deliver more than $15 billion in value by 2050, along with enough raw material to build 2 billion new panels. We could have a circular system that delivers consistently increasing output, that is, energy output, as panel materials are reused. And the industry we stand up over the next decade will decide whether that value is captured or ground into dust.

My guest today has spent the last eight years building the version of recycling solar panels that can capture those materials. Brett Henderson is co-founder and CEO of SolarPanelRecycling.com, known as SPR, which owns and operates recycling plants in North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, along with a new California facility that’s slated to open this year. Each is built to process about a million panels annually and to scale toward 3 million within just six months when capacity is needed as more panels are retired. SPR is a Solar Energy Industries Association-approved national recycler, and it partnered with SEIA on the first residential solar panel drop-off program in the United States.

Brett came to solar after 18 years in electronics recycling at Powerhouse Recycling, which is SPR’s parent company, and there he built programs for Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, and universities. The company started in 2018 — that’s SPR — when a longtime utility client called with 10,000 panels coming out of a power plant and nowhere to send them. Brett draws a hard line between true recycling, that is, the clean separation of glass, aluminum, silicon, and the metals into commodities that can be remanufactured or used in remanufacturing, and the shredding and downcycling that often passes for responsible disposal, which he labels as greenwashing. He has seen the cost of recycling at the plant fall by 42% over just three years as technology improved and volume grew. He argues that the economics are approaching the point where a landfill stops being the cheap option on price alone, and getting there is a business design problem. You have to decide what to own, what to build ahead of demand, and how to turn yesterday’s clean energy into tomorrow’s raw materials.

So, let’s find out how you build that business after a brief commercial break. Stay tuned.

Brett Henderson, welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. How are you doing today?

Brett Henderson (4:44)

Great. Thanks for having me, Mitch.

Mitch Ratcliffe (4:45)

Well, thank you for joining us, diving into solar panel recycling in anticipation of a growing wave of material that’s going to be coming down the pike. In 2018, a utility client showed up at your office with 10,000 panels and nowhere to send them. I’m wondering what made you think at that point that solar recycling could be a standalone business rather than just a service line within a larger recycling organization.

Brett Henderson (5:10)

Yeah, absolutely. So I still have a dual role at the parent company that was presented that opportunity. It’s Powerhouse Recycling. It’s been operating about two decades in the electronics recycling and IT asset disposition space. So one of our longtime utility clients at that time, in 2018 — so at that point, if I’m doing my quick math, we’d been servicing them about 15 years — did indeed come to us, and they were pulling out about 10,000 panels from a power plant they had. And they went to market and recognized at that time that there really weren’t any options, you know, locally within the state or even in the entire U.S. market at that time. And what I mean by that is aluminum harvesting was happening. You know, anything that has aluminum, a nice metal to it, you could probably present it to a metal yard, they’ll capture that, but then the other, more technical or challenging portions might just go to landfill.

So this particular utility of ours is, as most are, really under the microscope on their environmental sustainability initiatives. So they came to us and said, do you kind of want to tackle this project together? So, you know, to answer your question, when it was first presented to me, you look at everything for a client, to service them well. But, kind of in the back of my mind, and full disclosure, um, how many solar panels are really out there? So…

Mitch Ratcliffe (6:36)

Yeah, well, that’s the question. I mean, you’re way ahead of the wave.

Brett Henderson (6:40)

Yeah, right. So we started diving into this and started recognizing that, you know, maybe shift the mind from solar panels on the residential rooftops and go, how many of these utility-scale solar facilities are out there? And you start diving into the numbers and start recognizing, you know, hundreds of millions of panels, right? And then really dive back into where our flagship facility was at the time and still is, in North Carolina. I start diving into that data and recognize that North Carolina was fourth in installations in the entire country. So it really kind of intrigued us to start going down this path and looking into it, and that’s kind of when the R&D began, if you will.

Mitch Ratcliffe (7:21)

Now, most panel recycling focuses on the metal, the aluminum that you mentioned a moment ago. But there’s glass, there’s silicon, there’s silver, and other materials. What’s the value of a panel, and where does that value come from?

Brett Henderson (7:35)

Yes. So you’ll hear a lot, whether it’s us speaking at trade shows or some of our marketing materials, or if it’s even behind closed doors when we’re really doing the environmental audits with our clients — really, this whole industry, it’s all about the glass. So in any recycling medium, you really need to look at what’s the composition of that item, that widget you’re trying to recycle, right? So in the electronics recycling world, where our parent company still lives today and my entire 18 years in the recycling industry has lived, there’s a wide range of compositions depending on what that electronic is. But when you really look at the solar side of things, it’s glass, right?

So a single-sided solar panel, which means glass on one side — if you flip it upside down, you’ll see the plastic backsheet — it’s anywhere between 62% to 70% glass by weight. Bifacial modules, which are the newest technology being installed at the moment, where there’s glass on both sides — it allows them to be a bit more efficient because they could capture sun from both ways — the composition could be up to 80%.

So the aluminum frame indeed matters. It helps drive the cost per module that you’re hitting at. The silver recovery indeed matters. But really, the glass is where it all lays. If you cannot recover the glass cleanly without contaminating it with silicon and silver and other metals, or the plastic backsheet, or the encapsulant, then how can you charge yourself with the mission of being a recycler if that portion is kind of being skipped just to get the low-hanging fruit, which is aluminum? So the module value comes from the aluminum and derives from the silver that’s recovered, but that’s helping subsidize the overall cost of recycling a panel, which is typically always going to be a negative value proposition because it’s mainly glass, right?

Mitch Ratcliffe (9:30)

That’s an interesting point, that it’s a negative value proposition. It’s not the kind of pitch you would normally make for a business. So how do you describe what SPR is selling? Is it a disposal service for the asset owner? Is it a commodity that you’re providing as a feedstock to manufacturers? Or is it providing compliance information? Or all three?

Brett Henderson (9:52)

A little of all three. I mean, what we kind of present it as is risk mitigation, right? And it’s not just risk mitigation from an environmental perspective, which we’ll dive into. It’s not just risk mitigation on a project timeline occurring or staying on track. And it’s not just risk mitigation on DOT compliance when you transport panels from facility to landfill, or facility to, hopefully, a recycler like us. So all of these things are important. So that’s really what you’re selling.

I give the analogy of a cardboard box, right? Cardboard can be recycled, should be recycled. A lot of households, a lot of businesses choose not to, because there’s not a whole lot of risk if you throw it in the landfill. There’s not regulation against it. You’re not worried about hazardous waste or universal waste being transported incorrectly. You’re not really even worried from a PR perspective of someone coming to your facility and saying, “Why aren’t you recycling your cardboard?” But when you flip that on the panel side — this is the service we’re selling and what our industry is selling — solar panels have a wide range of compositions to them. Some could be classified hazardous. Most, you do not have the information. So as it stands today, from a federal level, it’s deemed hazardous until proven otherwise.

So the option and the ability to just load up thousands and thousands of solar panels from your utility site, put them on a truck, transfer them to landfill, and dump them is opening up all sorts of generator liability. It’s opening up the DOT risk on how you transport and tag waste. So these are all the things that are why this service is being presented, and why a utility or an energy company is willing to be charged for that service.

Mitch Ratcliffe (11:35)

You’re describing a lot of different panel chemistries, a lot of different physical configurations. That requires a lot of specialized equipment. How do you maintain full utilization of that so that you’re actually earning the return you’re expecting?

Brett Henderson (11:49)

Absolutely. So, quite a few different ways. You know, first and foremost, R&D has to be ongoing, right? So the way a panel is being manufactured now, or even a future panel that is still in that manufacturer’s R&D phase, could be a wildly different composition, size, and technology than what’s hitting our recycling stream now. So we have a very strong team. It’s led by Finley Collins, our circularity research analyst, and she is consistently looking at what’s in the stream now, what is upcoming, and maybe even what are some of those technologies that are currently in the lab setting, so we could really be a bit proactive on what are going to be the challenges that are upcoming.

Then that has to coordinate — and part of my role as a quarterback of all of this — coordinate with our actual operations team and our engineers that have the current technology. Okay, our current recycling technology in our North Carolina plant, our Georgia plant, our Texas plant, our California plant that’s getting set to open: how is that going to handle the current panel compositions hitting the stream now, and ones that our clients are installing? Because, again, installation breakage could put a very new technology into the recycling stream right away. So it’s this juggling act and this balancing act to continuously invest, research, and make sure that you have opportunities to offer recycling for all panel types.

Mitch Ratcliffe (13:17)

Design for recyclability is really where we need to go as an economy more broadly. But if you could sit down with panel manufacturers today and say, you know, build it this way, we can recover a lot more material, what would you advise them to do? How would you suggest simplifying the designs for better recyclability?

Brett Henderson (13:35)

Yeah, this is a question that’s asked often, not just in the solar manufacturing and recycling spaces when they merge, but really dating back to, you know, you can look at car manufacturers and the right to repair, and electronics manufacturers. And it’s always a challenge for a recycler to really have that leverage and push that manufacturer to have those discussions, mainly because they have a duty to their stakeholders and their shareholders to make sure they’re manufacturing a product that lasts, manufacturing a product that meets consumer needs and is durable, right? So we’re kind of that person on their right shoulder, in their ear, that they kind of probably want to ignore a little bit at times.

That being said, on the solar space, there has been some level of engagement from some manufacturers. But how it stands now is, the United States needs a whole lot of power. That’s no mystery, you know, with data centers and AI really driving that, and then all sorts of the building and expansions. Anyone that could produce any type of energy really is holding the cards at the moment, and they have this core focus to meet demand and get panels, in this instance, out into the field to help support power needs. So as it stands now, there’s not a whole lot of leverage or thought put into that.

And the challenging part with solar is, it needs to be durable. It’s supposed to withstand extreme hail events, wind events, hurricanes, all sorts of natural disasters, or even just regular weather events. So by design, it needs to almost be challenging to break apart, right? And now analyze the problem when it comes to a recycling facility: our whole goal is to break it apart to all raw commodities and get those back into the stream. So there’s obviously wildly opposite goals and conflicting goals there that make that a challenge. Now, that being said, what we do have quite a bit of talks with the manufacturers about, and see some willingness to, is the information of the panel, which is still lacking and could really help be proactive in recycling.

Mitch Ratcliffe (15:42)

You mean in the product passport sense?

Brett Henderson (15:44)

Yeah, in a few different senses. One is a TCLP test, right? Would manufacturers be willing to say, this particular make and model, here’s its characteristics? Now we know it needs to be classified hazardous, or it doesn’t need to be classified hazardous. Because as it stands now, we have to get a physical panel from the field from one of our clients — knowing that they’re having an upcoming event or repower, or they just have some backlog ready to recycle — and we have to bring that in, grind that down, if you will, and get it to a lab to understand how to classify it, to really be compliant with DOT rules and all sorts of regulations. So a manufacturer could really assist in allowing the recyclers, and even the asset owners, to know what this panel is comprised of. Does the lead pass TCLP? Does it not pass TCLP? So you could classify this as waste when it comes to end of life.

And a second piece of information that could be super helpful is, again, we talked at the front end of this conversation how aluminum recovery and silver recovery is really what subsidizes the recycling costs. That determines if a panel is five to $7 to recycle, or higher or lower. So understanding the silver and some of the other metals that were utilized, by parts per million or by grams per metric ton — understanding the composition of that panel could also help make recycling costs more competitive, and then also help divert more panels from landfill to the recycling stream.

Mitch Ratcliffe (17:21)

Well, SPR owns and operates all four of the facilities that you operate, and you don’t broker materials out to scrapyards or haulers or anybody. I have to say, you know, ownership is obviously capital intensive, but what does vertical integration buy you that you couldn’t get from a network model?

Brett Henderson (17:39)

Yeah, seamless service is first and foremost. And what I mean by that is, let’s talk about repowers here. Let’s talk about installations. Really, it’s the same bucket, but we’ll do this under the guise of repower. So a repower is when a utility or an energy company is going, we have 100,000 panels in our field, they’re 200-watt panels, you can now get an 800-watt panel. So the math maths out for us to pull these panels out, you know, maybe much earlier than the 25-year span that they’re kind of advertised for, so we could get a four-times power generation there.

It’s a major undertaking. They’re going to do it in stages, so a lot of times the site doesn’t have to ever completely shut down. So why does end of life matter in that instance, and why does vertical integration matter? Is, they really need seamless service. If they have 20 truckloads of new panels arriving that day, and their contractor has 20 truckloads of old panels that need to go out that day — it’s not a warehouse, there’s not loading docks — there’s a lot of seamless service from a logistical standpoint that could really have high cost to a customer for not going off seamlessly. So us controlling that logistical network is just one of four or five reasons why this owned-and-operated model is very helpful to our clients.

Mitch Ratcliffe (18:58)

Does it make sense to start thinking about this as a full lifecycle integration opportunity? Should you be part of a panel company, or panel companies be co-invested across a variety of processors like you?

Brett Henderson (19:10)

I believe that we won’t probably see it get to that point. And if I understand your question, what maybe you’re hitting at here is circularity in the sense that the commodity comes from the panel and goes directly into panel manufacturing. Is this what you’re…

Mitch Ratcliffe (19:26)

Yeah, essentially stewardship of the material over many generations.

Brett Henderson (19:30)

Yeah. So, you know, I can’t speak for manufacturers if they want to get into the recycling space or partner directly with a recycler under some sort of joint venture, but I don’t see it having value to a manufacturer in terms of cost savings of getting a material recovered from a solar panel and put back into manufacturing. And the reason for that is the polysilicon that’s used to make the wafer itself. So obviously the panel can’t work if you don’t have good solar wafers. That has to be manufactured at a 6N purity, and that basically means 99.9999%. That’s where the 6N comes from, and the recycling space can’t generate that.

When they’re getting this pure polysilicon to manufacture solar wafers, there’s other types of agents and reactors and compositions baked into this, if you will. Now it’s not pure silicon. So when the recycling industry recovers it, that silicon could be used in a lot of other applications that don’t require 6N purity, but not solar manufacturing. So one of the biggest drivers of what makes the solar panel work all of a sudden still can’t go back into it.

And then there’s an economic side to it as well. Raw polysilicon is not the most expensive raw material. So the cost of — our industry, we partnered with some very brilliant researchers that have been working on this for years, and they could get it to that 6N purity, but the economics aren’t even close.

Mitch Ratcliffe (21:09)

Yeah, right. At the cost that it’s going to take, you wouldn’t be profitable. Yeah, there’s a lot to talk about here. Let’s take a quick commercial break, folks. We’ll be right back to continue the conversation with Brett Henderson of SolarPanelRecycling.com.

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let’s return to my conversation with Brett Henderson. He’s the co-founder and CEO of SPR, which you can find at solarpanelrecycling.com. They’re a North Carolina-based recycling company that’s partnered with the Solar Energy Industries Association to launch the nation’s first residential solar panel drop-off recycling program. Brett, you’ve reported that your recycling costs have fallen by 42% over the last 36 months. What are the factors that are driving that cost curve down?

Brett Henderson (21:57)

So there’s several things that really drove the 42% drop in costing, but the main one is the technological advances that we’ve had. We’re consistently investing in improving our recycling lines that are separating all of the commodities cleanly from the solar panel. So we used to make this joke starting in 2018, when we were under R&D stages and putting equipment in, that if you visited any of our facilities and came back six months later, you might see a wildly different line. And that was true for the better part of 2018 to 2023. Now, when you would come back, you’d see iterations of it, some add-ons, some movements, so you might not see a complete rip-up-the-script type of deal. But really, technological advances is what’s driving these costs down.

First and foremost, how many panels could get through a machine in a given hour is a large aspect of it. But more importantly is how cleanly are you recovering the silver, the aluminum, the items that have value, to really help cut into the cost of getting clean glass cullet out into the market, you know, the negative-valued items. So those technological advances have allowed us to recover higher returns on items and go direct to foundries, direct to consumers with our glass and aluminum and silver, and then also get cleaner commodity separation for even some of those negative-valued items to make sure that they’re consumed at a better rate. So technological advances is the largest one.

Second is just economies of scale, right? You know, when we first got into this space, we might have a month where we bring in 15,000, 25,000 panels, and then you have a month where we only bring in 5,000. Then you have a month where you have 50,000. Well, fast-forward to 2026, and we have all or some involvement with the largest utilities or energy companies in the United States, the largest asset owners. You have a little bit more consistency there in your volume coming through. So that allows us to go to market to these manufacturers that consume our generated commodities and (a) get better pricing because we’re giving them more consistent volume, or (b) even open up markets together, right? So, you know, Mitch, if you wanted to use recycled glass cullet in something that you’re manufacturing, you’re probably not going to really take a serious look at that and start adjusting your manufacturing line until companies like SPR could say, I could provide you 160 tons every other week of it, right? So some of those economies of scale is really what helps bring down the pricing as well.

Mitch Ratcliffe (24:25)

Well, and that volume has allowed you to offer the residential panel recycling service, which of course then gives you another source of supply. But tell us about that program, and where can people drop stuff off?

Brett Henderson (24:36)

Yeah, absolutely. So, again, a lot of the recycling industry, really in any recycling medium, but even more so solar, is really driven around high volume, large scale. So all of the focus and the R&D and the education outreach is really toward corporations, private equity, anyone that owns these assets, utilities, energy companies. So the residential sector was kind of left behind as this industry that’s in its infancy is growing.

So SEIA, which is the largest trade association for solar in the United States, came to us two years ago and said, we’re receiving maybe 15, 20, 25 calls sometimes a week from a homeowner saying, we have one panel, we have two panels, we really like recycling, we don’t want to throw it in the landfill. So they recognized our early-mover advantage as one of the thought leaders in this industry, as well as the fact that our parent company already has municipality convenience center logistics and trucks staged throughout the country for the electronics recycling side. So they came to us and said a natural fit would be for us to partner together and kind of do this first pilot to understand how many residential panels are actually in need of being recycled. Are they willing to load that one panel in the back of their car to bring it to a convenience center?

So we partnered with Mecklenburg County, which is the county that represents Charlotte, North Carolina, for a few reasons. One, they have five collection sites that we already service. We already have trucks and infrastructure there, so it could keep costs low for the pilot. Secondly, our flagship recycling facility is 45 minutes up the road from it. And third, North Carolina is fourth in installations of solar in the entire nation. So it felt like a natural fit.

So we ran this six-month pilot program, and we found out a few pieces of key information. There is a willingness to recycle, but not a whole lot of volume yet. We received about 19 panels. And if you think about it — we talked about repowers earlier — a utility that’s trying to generate as much energy as possible for the grid, it makes sense to pull out a panel early, because you’re swapping out a 200-watt for an 800-watt, for a times-four multiplier. But when your house system is designed, it’s kind of designed to run the power that’s needed for the house. So a homeowner’s mindset is quite the opposite: I want these to last even past the 25 years. If I’m lucky, they last 50 years. So really, what you’re seeing in the residential space now would have to be a failed panel, or something quite literally dropping from the sky to crack it, or a hail event. That’s really what’s hitting the stream. So there’s not a whole lot of volume yet, but there is a willingness from those that invested in solar on the rooftop to want to actually recycle it.

Mitch Ratcliffe (27:19)

You make this point about the static needs of a home — I know I need this many kilowatt-hours to power the house overall. That suggests that there might be a reselling opportunity in taking those repowered panels you were talking about and making them available to residential buyers who do look for the 25 years that the utility is not interested in because they’re interested in maximum output. Is that a potential new direction for us to think about, repurposing some retired utility-scale solar panels?

Brett Henderson (27:52)

Yes. So we talk quite a bit on this. Finley Collins, who I mentioned earlier, our circularity research analyst, wrote a wonderful white paper on the challenges of reuse and repurpose. You know, any of the listeners are welcome to reach out on our website and request it. But there is an opportunity to reuse solar panels. Right now, in the market, though, it’s a little bit of greenwashing in the sense of really what that market could consume, and I’ll tell you why.

A solar panel isn’t plug-and-play. They’re not homogenous in their size, their width, their depth, their wattage, what inverter box, what string inverters it needs, the racking. So what happens is, when we have a utility take out 100,000 panels that still have life left on them, there could be an opportunity when you’re talking five panels, 10 panels, maybe for the DIYer to take that one panel and rig it on their RV. But this kind of notion that it’s going to put really any type of dent or percentage in panels from the recycling stream, to reuse, is quite flawed for that reason, right? And so utility-scale panels are typically heavier and larger, so the odds of it going on a rooftop application for a home is probably little to none. But that home might not have been developed yet, their system, and then they could consider something like that.

But, you know, when we’re talking about repowers — we’re under a repower right now that’s a million panels plus coming out, over the course of a few years as they’re doing it in stages — we get asked that all the time. Can’t you take these 1.2 million panels and put them overseas in an area that can’t afford it? And the challenge with that is, it has to be an engineered setup. You have to get the right racking, and then there’s a lot of interconnection rules about putting a used panel onto the grid. In the U.S., for example, the UL rating, once that panel is used and off of its initial application, the UL rating is no longer valid. So that’s just one of many problems of taking used panels and getting permitted to put a used panel back on the grid by the millions, by the hundreds of thousands — not for the DIYer that might want to put it on his or her RV.

Mitch Ratcliffe (30:14)

So 31 states have some form of decommissioning policy today. From a business design standpoint, which policies do you see actually creating functioning markets? Is it the landfill bans? The bonding requirements? Is it extended producer responsibility? And are there policies that just create paperwork?

Brett Henderson (30:33)

Yeah. So landfill bans is where we stand on this topic. We’re asked it quite often. I’ve spoken on the legislative floor in North Carolina for their economic review commission a few years back. Another partner of ours, Steven Turk, actually spoke up on Capitol Hill on this topic a little bit. But we see a landfill ban really being the one that would create the most action.

EPR is a very challenging thing to do in this space. You know, these panels might be installed for five years, 10 years, with the goal of them being 25 years, right? So how do we set up this EPR system when there could be a 25-year lifecycle for it? That creates some challenges. But even more so, we talked earlier about the leverage of this whole thing. There’s probably not going to be a tremendous amount of states willing to say to the manufacturer — which, by the way, most manufacturers are overseas still — that you’re not going to supply power to our state, even though the whole country is in need of as much power as possible, because you’re not helping fund recycling.

The state of Washington put in an EPR program for solar, and they had to extend the timeline for manufacturers to apply to it, because only one manufacturer actually went through the paperwork and applied to be compliant in it by its first deadline. So I think that’s just one example of why EPR might be a challenge.

So really, landfill bans is the largest thing that would drive it, as well as decommissioning, bonding, and insurance requirements. When we first got into the space, we would be presenting at a trade show, and someone would come up and say, hey, we’re trying to get this project permitted, and our locality needs to understand what the cost would be to return the land back to use. And they were tagging these as a positive: we’re going to take this equipment out, whether it’s five years, 10 years, 40 years down the road, and all the infrastructure is going to net positive value back, so we don’t need bonding, we don’t need insurance. And the education has kind of shifted that mentality now, where there are very few localities that aren’t onto that. So I think the landfill ban and the bonding and insurance requirements is really what would drive panels from going from landfill to recycling stream.

Mitch Ratcliffe (32:55)

Now, your bottom line is exposed to commodity price swings, like for aluminum and silver that we’ve been talking about. Can a recycler actually build a business model that survives a commodity price downturn?

Brett Henderson (33:06)

It can, because in this instance, again, it’s a service charge for that risk mitigation. So right now, the recycling industry is still in its infancy stages with solar. So we are generating our own black book, if you will, of knowing this make and model recovers X amount of grams per metric ton of silver, and this make and model has X amount of tons of aluminum, and here’s the aluminum composition. When this builds out five years, 10 years, 15 years, we might be able to get really granular with the commodity market and say, well, this particular panel, we could actually be 80% under what we normally charge because we know it has higher silver recovery, we know the aluminum frame is heavier.

But right now, unless there’s just an absolute crash in silver and aluminum, the commodity market — we have to kind of take a bearish look at it when we’re pricing, because, again, to hit on what we said before, the manufacturers don’t tell you what the composition of these are. So there’s a wide range of silver recovery. So we can’t just take the extreme side of that and say every single solar panel is going to recover X amount of silver, or you could find yourself in a challenging situation where you can’t scale.

So aluminum and silver markets do matter. Both were inflated. Silver’s back down a little bit, back down to earth. But for a while, that did cause us to be a little bit more bullish in our pricing and come down lower. But for the most part, the way the industry is set up, a little bit of volatility in that isn’t going to change the pricing, because most of that’s going to be on the transportation costs to get the panel from site to facility, as well as the processing costs.

Mitch Ratcliffe (34:45)

Now, as we’ve been talking, we’ve referred repeatedly to the future wave of material that’s coming, and you need to build capacity to get ready for that. You’re expecting that repowering, as we’ve been talking about, is going to increase from about 10% of the supply to 80% of the volume in five years. How do you get the investment, the financing, in place to build that capacity when the demand hasn’t arrived?

Brett Henderson (35:09)

The level of risk and putting the cart before the horse is probably the most simplified answer to that, and we have that. We’re very bullish on this industry. I think our background of being one of the nation’s largest electronics recyclers — it kind of has a similar arc to where that started. It was unregulated. There was sham recycling going on. Then it becomes regulated. Then you recognize how much volume of electronics are hitting. We have a little bit more of a bullish take on solar because we’ve seen that, and we think there’s a lot of synergies and similarities to that.

So we’re investing in owned-and-operated facilities and regions. As soon as we have a partner that might have only 100,000 panels that we’re contracted to take, we’re willing to maybe invest in that to build out our network ahead of all of these repowers hitting. But you are right, it is capital intensive. You have to have wonderful partners. Our parent company is what’s funding most of it. We have some other private investments at times. But again, we want to build out this infrastructure so that when that wave hits, we’re ready to absorb as many of those panels as we could be offered. We don’t want to be in that position where we’re turning down multimillion-panel repowers because we’re just building out our second facility.

The other side of that is, all of our facilities are being built with more added capacity that could get online much quicker. So the longer and more capital-intensive buildout is the actual facility, the land, the permitting, getting that first line in there, getting the training, the labor. You know, it’s a new industry. We can’t go to the industry and find someone that said, hey, I worked for a solar panel recycler the last 20 years. So there’s a lot of education and training. So once we’re having those built out — we did it in North Carolina first, then Georgia, then Texas, California slated to open in 2026 — all of these are being built where, okay, those have a capacity right now of 1 million panels a year, but it can quickly scale to 3 million panels a year within six months. So that’s the other side of, as you’re building out this network, is put the new spots, or put the new regional locations out there, but also make sure that those could quickly scale for more capacity.

Mitch Ratcliffe (37:16)

So you just described enough capacity to address what the EPA projects is going to be happening by mid-century. By 2050, they’re estimating about 10 million tons a year of panels are going to be coming back for recycling. Play this all forward to 2036. How many facilities, what policy frameworks, and what commodity markets are going to have developed as a result of this massive wave of new solar panels needing recycling?

Brett Henderson (37:42)

Yeah, a quick aside on the math of that. So the recycling world is always operating in tons or pounds when it comes to capacities, when it comes to recycling throughput and output. What I was just referring to was panel count. So, you know, 1 million panels annually, scalable to 3 million panels. And that was kind of driven off of the asset owners — you know, they speak in watts, right, how much is it per watt — so we kind of met in the middle there and kind of helped guide the industry to say, let’s do per-panel costing, let’s do per-panel quotes. The report you’re referring to, for 10 million metric tons — now you’re talking about 393 million panels.

Mitch Ratcliffe (38:29)

So, okay, so there’s plenty of room for growth.

Brett Henderson (38:30)

Yes, yeah. So, exactly. So, you know, we obviously want to capture as much of that as possible, but we’re not the only game in town. We won’t be the only game in town. But we want to build regionally to make sure that we have a competitive advantage from the logistical cost, so that client wants to push their panels through our facilities versus elsewhere. Logistics, nine times out of 10, is going to be the highest cost in recycling a panel, more so than the processing fees.

Mitch Ratcliffe (38:57)

To your point, there is no way of projecting the future value of a used panel. Should that be one of the focuses of the industry, to begin to provide the accounting to panel acquirers so that they can plan the full lifecycle? And would you share your data in order to help establish that standard?

Brett Henderson (39:16)

Yeah, the short of that is, we already have been developing that. We have some 3D mapping capabilities in all of our facilities, so anytime we get a panel in, we run these panels through so we can understand its true composition, because the manufacturers are not sharing that. So now we know this particular make and model has X amount of grams per metric ton of silver, it has this amount of weight of aluminum. So now we have this black book, if you will, that we already are developing, and, you know, R&D started in 2018, so we already have eight years of this. And we do already share that with our onboarded, signed clients.

Putting that out in the ethos would be wild for us to do at the moment, because we have that competitive advantage of doing this the right way from day one, where we could actually gather this data. At some point — whether, you know, you’re referencing 2036 — at some point there’ll be enough recyclers, I’ve been doing it long enough, that maybe that information isn’t so proprietary, that there’s value for our team to kind of be the home of that information and provide that to the public. But right now our clients are already receiving that service. And to be fair, there’s so many different makes and models that that service isn’t utilized 100% of the time, right? Like, a lot of these panels coming through, we’re going, that’s the first time we’ve had that. Let us bring this in and get you some good information on it.

Mitch Ratcliffe (40:38)

It is reminiscent of the emergence of standards across information technology as well. But in order for us to have a functioning and predictable circular economy, this information ultimately is going to become commonplace.

Brett Henderson (40:51)

Right.

Mitch Ratcliffe (40:52)

You don’t lose an advantage in that case, but you have had the opportunity to lead the industry toward those standards, and that could cement your leadership. Is that the kind of strategy that SPR is thinking about, or are you going to hunker down and keep it private in order to maintain that advantage?

Brett Henderson (41:12)

Absolutely. So we have always wanted to position ourselves as a thought leader. I think we’ve had a lot of early success in this industry due to our transparency. Here’s the issues. Here’s how you should audit a recycler. Here’s the right questions you should be asking. Because in an industry that doesn’t have any certifications or standards yet, we wanted to be the one driving it the right way. If we lose a deal because we know someone’s bringing that panel in, harvesting the aluminum frame, and landfilling the other 90%, and then they could offer free recycling or even pay back a few dollars — we’re fine losing those deals now, because we have been through this arc of what you see in our electronics recycling.

So we’re going to continuously be that thought leader and driving the industry the correct way. So, yeah, we would absolutely share that information. We do share a good bit of information publicly, you know, such as this white paper I’ve referred to that already is doing a lot of groundwork for people entering the space. But right now, as it stands today, there’s a lot of institutional knowledge that went into developing the specifics of actual panels, that we would present that to the market when it’s the right time.

Mitch Ratcliffe (42:21)

So we’re in the early chapters of this story, and people are going to want to understand what you’re learning. How can they follow your work?

Brett Henderson (42:27)

Yeah, so we’re quite active on LinkedIn. I think that’s probably the best space. We have a wonderful marketing team, as well as what we like to joke about here, that we really like to geek out on this stuff. We don’t want to market our way into recycling. We want our information to be clean, transparent, and knowledgeable. We’ll talk about what’s great about it. We’ll talk about the challenges about it. So a lot of that could be followed through that.

We’re at typically most regional and national trade shows. We speak often at them. We have a team that’s working on white papers, case studies. All these things are kind of readily available. We’re across a lot of the different social channels where those could be found, or on our website you could sign up for a newsletter that kind of guides some of these out as well. But I really would say LinkedIn and signing up for that newsletter is probably the easiest and quickest way to absorb all the information we’re putting out there.

Mitch Ratcliffe (43:21)

Well, Brett, thanks for sharing the story. It’s been a fascinating conversation.

Brett Henderson (43:25)

Yeah, thank you, Mitch. It’s always wonderful to talk about it. Anytime you’re in an industry that’s really in its infancy, the opportunities that you’re giving for this subject to come to light are equally as important. So thank you for that opportunity.

Mitch Ratcliffe (43:43)

Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Brett Henderson, co-founder and CEO of SolarPanelRecycling.com, known in the industry as SPR, a company that owns and operates recycling plants in North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, along with a new California facility opening this year. You can learn more about Brett and SPR at solarpanelrecycling.com. Solarpanelrecycling is all one word, no space, no dash: solarpanelrecycling.com.

So, reflecting on that conversation, the number that I’m thinking about is 42%, and that’s not just because 42 was Douglas Adams’ answer to the meaning of the universe. It represents how far the cost of recycling a panel the right way has fallen at SPR over the past 36 months, and it points to continued efficiency gains. No subsidy produced that. No mandate produced that. It came from rebuilding processing systems to separate clean glass, aluminum, and silver reliably enough to sell, and with enough steady volume to negotiate better prices with buyers who are seeking reliable material sources.

Brett’s candid that recycling a solar panel still remains a negative value proposition on the face of it, because a panel is mostly glass, and glass is cheap. The business he’s describing also sells risk mitigation to utilities that cannot afford a truckload of possibly hazardous waste ending up in the wrong place, so they take it and recycle it and get a fee for taking it away as well. The recovered materials subsidize the rest, and when revenue streams converge, that is what an industry looks like at the moment it starts to work.

The panel recycling wave is already building, and the recycling infrastructure is being built ahead of it. Brett’s plants are each built to run about a million panels a year, and to scale toward 3 million in just six months when panel retirements grow. And he’s financing that capacity before the volume arrives, largely off his parent company’s balance sheet. Now, that’s a real bet with a real downside. If repowering economics soften, that capital is just going to be sitting there not earning a return. But the alternative is an industry that turns away million-panel contracts because it was waiting for proof. Every array going up right now, including, for instance, the tribal solar power projects that Cody Two Bears of Indigenized Energy described on a recent show, is tomorrow’s feedstock for the next generation of panels and other products. Somebody has to build the receiving end of the circular economy first, and SPR is doing it, at least for solar panels.

The polysilicon in a solar wafer has to hit 6N purity. That’s 99.9999%, and recovered silicon currently can’t achieve those levels at a price anyone would pay. The glass comes back clean enough for foundries and other manufacturers, but not for new module glass. So the panel currently does not close its own loop, and Brett said so frankly. This is a most useful correction to how we think about circularity. A solar panel is an industrial object made of several materials that each have their own best destination, and the discipline that matters is clean separation, not sentimental attachment to a closed loop. So you have to take apart your thinking about circularity and reassemble it to make sense in the context that it actually exists. Amy Fernandez and Zach Lauer of Trex, the decking company, made the same case when we talked about polyethylene film recently on another show. The best source of feedstock for Trex turned out to be its retired decking, not solely collecting more polyethylene film. So for the time being, we have to judge a recycler, at least a solar panel recycler, on whether the glass they process leaves uncontaminated, not whether it goes back to where it came from — in other words, another panel.

The last idea of note is what all of this is for. Materials recovered from retired panels are materials that do not need to be mined, refined, and produced, so you don’t have to do as much damage to the environment, and you use a lot less energy. The estimated value of recoverable materials in end-of-life solar panels could exceed $15 billion by 2050. That’s enough raw material for 2 billion new panels, the basis for a robust industry, too. But that value will be realized only if someone will buy it, and that’s because end markets are built on reliability.

Mitch Ratcliffe (48:06)

Brett put this plainly: a manufacturer will not retool their line to use recycled glass until the supplier can promise 160 tons of it every other week. New rules can move that volume faster than prices. The European Union requires producers to finance collection and recycles the majority of its retired panels. On the other hand, the United States, without these regulations, recovers only 10%. The proposed EPA universal waste rule for panels has slipped again and is now expected, or rather not expected, until next year. Brett’s read on that is that landfill bans plus bonding and insurance requirements at the permitting stage of a solar project will do more than extended producer responsibility to drive recycling success. Regulation can create industries, not just destroy them, as critics often argue.

So we need to watch three things over the next 24 months: whether more states ban panels from landfills, whether decommissioning bonds become standard in project permitting, and whether the per-panel composition data — that is, what panels are made of — that recyclers are compiling privately becomes a shared standard, so everybody can begin to recognize the value in these materials based on a common understanding of that value. Those three will decide whether the next 393 million panels become raw material or just cover in a landfill. And we’re going to continue to track the story.

If this conversation changed how you think about the array on your roof or the one going up down the road, send it to someone who’s about to install solar, or leave a review wherever you’re listening. You folks are the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create less waste. There are more than 560 episodes waiting in the Sustainability In Your Ear archive, and you’ll find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness you prefer. Thank you for your support.

I’m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we will be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let’s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.

The post Sustainability In Your Ear: Building Solar Panel Recycling Capacity with SPR’s Brett Henderson appeared first on Earth911.

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Refrigerants have posed a threat to the environment for decades. A group of chemical compounds called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) was responsible for the ozone hole over Antarctica, which increased the risk of health problems from exposure to extreme levels of ultraviolet radiation. The world gradually phased it out, causing the ozone layer to recover.

The collective effort to avert an environmental disaster by banning CFCs is worth celebrating. However, their long-term replacements, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), have proved to contribute to global warming. Learn how they worsen climate change and about the things you can do to cool your home more sustainably.

Air conditioning equipment relies on refrigerant to cool spaces. As a liquid, it flows through the unit’s evaporator coil and absorbs heat from nearby warm indoor air. Then, this fluid boils and turns into cool, low-pressure gas. The compressor converts it into a hot, high-pressure gas, raising its temperature above that of the outside air as it enters the condenser coil outside. The refrigerant releases heat inside, as the fan blows air over the coil. Next, the gas condenses back into a high-pressure liquid as it cools. It passes through an expansion valve, sharply dropping its pressure and temperature. The fluid reenters the evaporator coil to absorb more heat, repeating the process.

The refrigerant in fridges and freezers works similarly. The fluid also undergoes evaporation, compression, condensation, and expansion to cool the interior and transfer heat to the room.

Most Common Refrigerants Used Today

The most common air conditioner refrigerant is R-410A. Also known as Puron, it’s an HFC, which means it doesn’t deplete the ozone layer but has a high global warming potential (GWP). Every ton of R-410A is equivalent to 7,308 tons of carbon dioxide, making it a potent greenhouse gas.

That’s why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has begun phasing it out. It no longer allows contractors to install HVAC equipment with R-410A manufactured or imported before January 1, 2025, in houses. This policy mandates that the construction and home improvement industries gradually transition to more eco-friendly refrigerants.

HVAC manufacturers are gravitating toward R-454B as the new standard for central air conditioning. Also known as Puron Advance, it’s a combination of HFC and hydrofluoroolefin. This blend contributes significantly less to climate change but has a safety designation of A2L, indicating low toxicity and a mildly flammable, low-burning-velocity profile.

For ductless ACs, HVAC brands are adopting R-32, a single-component HFC with a lower GWP and better recyclability.

Refrigerator makers are following the same trend. They’re decoupling from R-134a, the long-established refrigerant standard, as authorities begin phasing it down due to its high GWP. Its alternative is R-6000a or isobutane, a naturally occurring hydrocarbon found in crude oil and natural gas. This fossil-fuel derivative is still more sustainable than its predecessor, as it poses no threat to the ozone layer and has an ultralow GWP.

How You Can Be Part of the Solution

Soon-to-be-obsolete refrigerants harm the environment only when they escape from your cooling equipment. Although some causes of refrigerant leakage are challenging to stop, you can mitigate them with these tips.

Replace Your Older Unit

Aging equipment is more prone to damage. Constant vibration causes the tubes to rub together and loosen their sealed joints. Proper AC and refrigerator care only helps if you brush the coils with appropriate tools, as hard bristles and harsh chemicals can compromise the copper tubes.

Upgrading to a model with a more eco-friendly refrigerant reduces the risk of leakage and its negative environmental impact if it does occur. A modern system is more efficient, lowering your utility bills and helping pay for itself over time.

Seal Minor Leaks

Say you can’t afford to change appliances at the moment. The least you can do is to fix the leaks before they compound.

A good way to detect small causes of refrigerant leakage on your own is to monitor your energy usage. Any refrigeration equipment running low on this fluid operates inefficiently, translating into higher electricity bills.

For instance, your AC may be leaky if your electric consumption jumped from last month, even though your thermostat setting and cooling habits remained the same. A modern fridge uses nearly 1,575 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, so anything above that may indicate a lower refrigerant level.

Contact a qualified technician immediately if you notice that your unit underperforms. A professional should be able to identify and address the source of leakage, then recharge your appliance to restore its performance.

Embrace Preventive Maintenance

This appliance care strategy means scheduling a professional inspection at fixed intervals. It enables a credentialed technician to assess your equipment thoroughly and identify red flags early.

Learning about a potential refrigerant leak before it happens gives you time to weigh your options and make an informed decision.

In contrast, reactive maintenance risks letting your faulty appliance leak an HFC refrigerant, which has accounted for 4% of the atmosphere’s increased heating power since 1990. A full-blown leak is more expensive to repair than a minor one, so it may catch you financially unprepared.

The refrigerant crisis can accelerate global warming, but the ozone hole proves that no environmental problem is insurmountable. If you do your share, you can be a force for good and make a difference in the fight against climate change.

About the Author

Jane Marsh is the Editor-in-Chief of Environment.co, a source of sustainable living ideas.

The post Guest Idea: Why Your AC Is Leaking a Refrigerant That’s a ‘Super Greenhouse Gas’ appeared first on Earth911.

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As you furnish a new space, or just invest in a new piece or two, you may be looking for non-toxic furniture brands to ensure clean indoor air and a safe environment for yourself and/or your loved ones.

Building materials and furnishings are one of the major causes of indoor air pollution, according to the EPA. So non-toxic furniture is a key aspect of creating a healthy home.

What is Non-Toxic Furniture?

If you’re here, searching for non toxic furniture, you’re probably somewhat familiar with the fact that most furniture contains either proven or potentially harmful chemicals and you’re looking for a better way. But what exactly is a better way?

Well, there’s actually quite a bit to consider, so here’s a quick list.

Scroll to the bottom for a much more in-depth explanation on all of these elements!

• No Flame Retardants
• No Formaldehyde (Many, though not all, composite woods that use adhesives contain formaldehyde. Some terms to look out for are plywood, particle board, engineered wood, or MDF.)
• Free of Toxic Water Repellents or Stain Guards (These commonly contain Perfluorochemicals, otherwise known as PFCs)
• No PVC / Vinyl (Common in fake leather or “vegan leather” fabrics)
• Zero VOC finishes (Or low-VOC)
• Uses Natural & Organic Materials (such as Dunlop latex instead of polyurethane foam, organic cotton, hemp, and linen instead of synthetic fabrics, and responsibly-sourced solid wood)
• Non-Toxic Certifications (such as GREENGUARD, which tests against chemcial emission limits or OEKO-TEX® STANDARD 100 which tests for harmful substances in textiles)

Is All Eco-Friendly Furniture Non-Toxic?

A lot of eco-friendly furniture is also non-toxic, but that isn’t always the case.

Some furniture brands advertise their products as eco-friendly because they use engineered wood or particleboard made from repurposed sawmill or other wood waste. But, in many cases (though not all), the adhesives used in engineered wood can be toxic, off-gassing high amounts of formaldehyde.

Recycled materials are another complicated one: we can recycle materials that were originally toxic, and so these recycled materials may still emit harmful chemicals.

If you want a guide to eco-friendly furniture specifically, check out my guide to sustainable furniture.

Is Secondhand Furniture Non-Toxic?

While used furniture isn’t necessarily non-toxic (unless you find used furniture from a brand using natural and organic materials) products do off-gas over time, and so depending on how old the furniture is, you are likely going to be exposed to fewer toxic chemicals than if buying that same piece of furniture new.

I just always like to check that the furniture has come from a smoke-free home. (And you might want to ensure it’s pet-free too, if you have allergies/sensitivities). You may also want to clean the furniture with non-toxic cleaning products, especially if buying preloved furniture with upholstery.

Something I’ve experienced with upholstered furniture is that even if someone is selling from a smoke-free, pet-free home they might have sprayed the furniture with strong fabric fresheners. So if there is any upholstery that is removable, I like to take it off and wash that before using the preloved pieces in my home. If it is not removable, it’s nice to leave it outside for a week or two.

If you don’t have any area to do this, I might recommend putting it in a room with the door closed and a window open with your indoor vents in that room closed.

[Related: Tips for shopping secondhand furniture & home goods]

Similarly, not all non-toxic furniture is eco-friendly. For instance, a brand might use natural materials that are irresponsibly sourced, such as harvesting wood from ancient or old growth forests. And there might be plastic materials that were tested to be low in harmful chemical emissions, but using fossil fuel fabrics isn’t exactly sustainable.

The good news is, though, that there are many brands that are low-tox and environmentally responsible.

What to Watch Out For When Shopping for Non-Toxic Furniture

First and foremost, be aware of “non-toxic furniture” ads with no explanations. The term non-toxic isn’t regulated and there isn’t even a standardized definition across the furniture industry. So be cautious of brands that pop up in Google Searches for “non-toxic furniture” — companies may be advertising for those keywords but not actually have non-toxic furniture.

Always look for further details on why a company is claiming to be non-toxic: What certifications do they have? What materials do they use? What finishes do they use on the products?

The second most common culprit of greenwashing in non-toxic furniture is “blends”. A lot of companies will call the upholstery on their furniture “Performance Linen” or “linen blend”, but when you look at the actual fabric content, or ask follow up questions, it’s actually only 5-9% linen and primarily polyester.

Vegan leather is another common term used in furniture. While “vegan” might sound sustainable and healthy, when it comes to leather it usually means it’s made of polyurethane (PU) or polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Which is, yes, plastic. Beyond toxicity, these plastic leathers are much less likely to last. And nearly impossible to repair when they do get damaged.

I’d also look out for the misuse of certifications. For example, OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 is a certification that only applies to the textiles in a furniture piece, like the cushions and upholstery fabrics. It cannot cover materials like wood or metal. So this doesn’t mean the whole furniture item has been tested against toxic chemicals — it only applies to the soft elements of the furniture.

Non-Toxic Furniture Companies To Know

These brands are leading the way when it comes to safe, organic, and non-toxic bedroom furniture, living room furniture, dining room furniture, and office furniture. There are even some brands who have certified non-toxic furniture, as an extra level of verification.

The price ranges of these brands vary, so you’ll find something that matches your needs — you’ll find everything from heirloom-quality premium furniture to affordable non-toxic furniture. Browse through this guide for some highlights and visit each brand’s website for further details.

This guide contains affiliate links and partners. As always, all brands meet strict criteria for sustainability and are brands we love, that we think you’ll love too!

Honorable Mentions

My Green Mattress: The mattress brand has a simple, and pretty affordable non-toxic bed frame made from untreated domestically-grown Poplar wood. It’s free from wood stains and adhesives. They didn’t make the main guide since they sell just one furniture product, but it’s here in case you’re looking for a bed frame.

Green Cradle: This brand has the basics covered for a non-toxic nursery — cribs, dressers, nightstands, armoires and bookcases made from 100% solid maple, red oak, cherry wood, and walnut hardwood with a zero VOC finish (linseed oil). Similar to above, the limitation of selection at Green Cradle means it’s not on the main guide, but its still a strong non-toxic option if you need nursery furniture.

IKEA (some pieces): Is IKEA non-toxic? Well, the answer is a bit mixed here. IKEA has taken many efforts to produce furniture with lower use of harmful chemicals and transitioned out all intentionally-added PFAS earlier than many other brands. However, they do use a lot of particleboard. While they say they take efforts to minimize the formaldehyde in their products, there are no specifics on this. So, I’d approach the brand with a bit of caution and prioritize their solid wood pieces if non-toxic furniture is important to you.

Dive Deeper: Here’s how I vetted for non-toxic furniture:

These are some considerations for what to look for when shopping for non-toxic furniture for your space.

No Flame Retardants

There are hundreds of different types of flame retardants. Evidence shows that flame retardants are associated with harmful health impacts, such as reproductive toxicity, cancer, neurological function, impacts to the immune system, and adverse effects on fetal and child development.

Once commonplace to meet California’s fire safety standard, fire retardants are now banned by the state at certain concentrations and in certain products — and a growing number of states are also taking action against them to some extent.

So furniture without flame retardants should be considered a very baseline measure.

No Formaldehyde

As one of the 25 most abundantly produced chemicals in the world, exposure to formaldehyde is a common concern in furniture as well as a number of other consumer products.

The health impacts of formaldehyde exposure include:

• “Corrosive injury to the gastrointestinal tract”,
• Irritation to the eyes, skin, and respiratory tract
• Malaise, headache, irritability, memory and dexterity issues, sleeping disturbances
• Can cause skin disorders and asthma-like symptoms in those who’ve been previously sensitized
• And formaldehyde has been determined to be a probable human carcinogen

And as the EPA states, the primary way you’d be exposed to formaldehyde is by “breathing air containing off-gassed formaldehyde”, often the formaldehyde that has “off-gassed from products, including composite wood products”.

No Perfluorochemicals (PFCs)

If you’re familiar with the DuPont scandal, you’re familiar with PFCs. While typically associated with non-stick cookware, PFCs are also used to repel oil and water on a number of other types of products, including textiles like upholstered furniture.

Why are PFCs a problem? Well they’re persistent not only on products, but in the environment and in people and animals. PFCs can be released directly from manufacturing facilities into the air and water or they can be released from any products you have at home containing PFCs and into your indoor air.

Exposure to PFCs has been associated with several adverse health effects including cancer, liver toxicity, hormone disruption, developmental toxicity, and harm to the immune system.

No PVC (Vinyl)

Many fake leathers (which sometimes come with the euphemism “vegan leather”) are made from PVC. PVC is known as the most toxic and environmentally damaging plastic.

The chemical used to make PVC, vinyl chloride, is a known carcinogen, linked to increased risks of several types of cancers, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Low VOC or Zero VOC Finishes

VOCs, or Volatile Organic Compounds, include a wide group of chemicals. Examples include: benzene, ethylene glycol, methylene chloride, tetrachloroethylene, toluene, and xylene.

While each chemical will have different levels of toxicity and may cause different health impacts, VOCs have been connected to many health issues, including damage to the liver, kidney, and central nervous system; headaches, fatigue, dizziness and nausea; and eye, nose, and throat irritation. Some VOCs are even suspected or known carcinogens.

In an ideal world, you would be able to find furniture that is completely free of VOCs.

A common nearly zero VOC finish is linseed oil, or flaxseed oil. This natural finish is food safe and free of harmful chemical solvents, heavy metals, or other toxic ingredients.

Low-VOC furniture can also be a good option, especially if you’re able to off-gas it outdoors or in your garage for a few months before bringing it into your home.

Organic & Natural Materials

This is an obvious one! Preferable materials include organic cotton, hemp, linen, sustainably and locally sourced wool, responsibly-harvested wood (ideally locally sourced and native to the region), and Dunlop latex.

Some certifications to know are Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), Global Organic Latex Standard (GOLS), and OEKO-TEX Standard 100, which tests for harmful substances in textiles.

Other Non-Toxic Certifications

One common certification is the GREENGUARD certification, which are products that have been “scientifically proven to meet some of the world’s most rigorous third-party chemical emissions standards”.

The GREENGUARD Gold certification is the next level. It includes criteria for additional chemicals and requires lower total VOC emissions. It limits the emissions of over 360 VOCs and chemical emissions.

Your Non-Toxic Lifestyle Journey

There is a lot to consider when shopping for non-toxic furniture! Hopefully, this breakdown of elements and red flags to look out for was useful and this list of non-toxic furniture brands gave you a good starting point in your research.

Keep in mind that the journey to green living or non-toxic living is just that — a journey. So, don’t stress if you can’t convert 100% of your home to non-toxic decor and furnishings right away.

Less toxic furniture is still better than conventional super toxic furniture. And implementing air filters or just keeping your windows open each day for an hour can also do wonders. Don’t feel pressured into perfection. Take it slow and do what you can, based on your time and budgetary constraints.

If you’re here, you’re already doing great!

Note: This curation is based upon publicly available information and while we do our due diligence, Conscious Life & Style cannot guarantee the claims of the companies featured. See our Website Disclaimer for more.

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The post 11 Best Non-Toxic and Low-VOC Furniture Brands for a Healthier Home (2026) appeared first on Conscious Life & Style.

11 Best Non-Toxic and Low-VOC Furniture Brands for a Healthier Home (2026)