Latest / Clean Power Hour / Why Solar Panel Recycling Is Critical for Clean Energy's Future | EP297

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Why Solar Panel Recycling Is Critical for Clean Energy's Future | EP297 · Clean Power Hour

• 0:50
  Adam Saghei: When you look at the landscape and the estimated value of where these materials are going to come from and extracting them in 2023 it's$170 million of valuable feedstock, critical materials that are within solar panels in 2030, that jumps up to two point 7,000,000,020 50, $80 billion
• 1:18
  intro: are you speeding the energy transition here at the Clean Power Hour, our host, Tim Montague, bring you the best in solar batteries and clean technologies every week. Want to go deeper into decarbonization.
• 1:28
  intro: We do too. We're here to help you understand and command the commercial, residential and utility, solar, wind and storage industries. So let's get to it together. We can speed the energy transition today
• 1:43
  Tim Montague: on the Clean Power Hour, solar recycling, you know, we are going to install something like 19 billion solar panels to green the global grid, and this is going to happen in the next 20 years, and that's a lot of solar panels. And some people are concerned that we're creating a massive e waste problem. So we're here to understand that problem, and what are the solutions. My guest is Adam Saghei. He is the CEO of we recycle solar. Welcome to the show.
• 2:14
  Adam Saghei: Tim, thank you for having me.
• 2:16
  Tim Montague: I love this topic.
• 2:16
  Tim Montague: I understand completely why people are concerned about E waste. It is a big problem, and there's good, bad, ugly ways of handling that we don't want to just put our electronics in the landfill, like we do with our household waste. And most states in the US now prevent that, but not all. And so some solar panels are ending up in landfills today in the United States. What we want to do is, first of all, design them to be repurposed. And there are companies that do this, they refurbish old solar panels, because solar panels can last a long time. Even after their 20 or 30 year commercial life, they've still got life in them, right? They're degrading at in the old days, okay, say 1% or 2% now they're degrading at half a percent per year. So after 20 years, they've got 90% they're at 90% production, so there's still a useful technology there, and you can repurpose them. But worst case, if they're broken and they have to be broken down and recycled, right? We want to capture all those useful materials, the silicon, the silver, the copper, the aluminum, the glass, because it's highly energetic to make a solar panel, and that's one of the challenges Adam right, is that solar panels are made to be rock solid and sit out there in the sun and the hail and the rain for 30 years, they're very hard to take apart. So welcome to the show, and please introduce yourself for our listeners. But let's get right into it like why did you dive into such a hard problem?
• 3:54
  Adam Saghei: Great question, right? So thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
• 3:57
  Adam Saghei: Adam Saghei, CEO and founder of we recycle solar. We'll start off with how we got into the space as solar is such an amazing technology, right? I'm sure all your listeners and viewers are part of that supply chain. They are creating amazing projects. They are manufacturing this great product that's sustainable. Back in 2017 we noticed the trend as as as we were a different company back then, and we were in the E waste returns management and reverse logistics space. And we noticed that all these projects were going up in the northeast, especially in the three PL space in the Amazon world, if you will, especially what they were doing to build out these huge facilities. And we said to ourselves, Well, what is the end of life look like? Who's going to figure this out? At that time, there was noone, and then in 2019 we made the push to figure this out, and it's been a very interesting ride. It's been a very exciting ride. And where we started and where the industry is going is very trans, uh, transformative, if you will, only because solar has always had this promise of being a clean green energy, and now it has even more value, because you're, we're in a place to now extract this, all of this value and yet, and add it once more to that circular approach. And it's one of the only few forms of energy that has now, turning currently, right now, which I'm very excited about, has a solution for end of life.
• 5:32
  Tim Montague: And what is that solution at end of life? And how do you define end of life? I guess,
• 5:37
  Adam Saghei: yeah. I mean, you know, it's interesting. So you brought it up, right? You said you brought up a very interesting point. What does end of life look like? These things can can last for over 2030, plus years. What we find is, oftentimes, when. And you get that degradation, and you start to lose some of the efficiency.
• 5:52
  Adam Saghei: There's still life in them. And there are markets, underserved markets, that are willing to take this at a fraction of the price of its Original MSRP. So there's, there's value there.
• 6:04
  Adam Saghei: The other value comes from Back to the, you know, critical material conversation, or how we can extract value back. You know, when you look at the landscape and the estimated value of where these materials are going to come from and extracting them in 2023 it's$170 million of valuable feedstock, critical materials that are within solar panels. In 2030, that jumps up to two point 7,000,000,020 50, $80 billion in use solar panels. You mean in Yes, and all of the installations throughout the US, there's this much value encapsulated, yeah, in this asset. So the question is, as we look at, what happens with the ones that we can't refurbish, right? Because we love doing that's, that's the at the forefront. How do you, you know, build value, resell, remarketing and refurbishment is, is the first leg of it, right? But what if, what if you can't do that?
• 7:10
  Adam Saghei: You know, there's, it's just beyond economical repair? Well, there is enough valuable material that can be extracted and broken down into critical raw materials that can then be injected back into domestic supply chain, and that's what I'm extremely proud of and excited about, and the work that we're doing in other companies like us in the space,
• 7:32
  Tim Montague: yeah. So break down the business model for us.
• 7:35
  Tim Montague: What exactly does we recycle solar do? Where do you get the solar panels? What are the types of of, you know, supplies, what are the there must be several different types. Like on a big construction project, there's broken solar panels that come out of the crate broken, right?
• 7:51
  Tim Montague: And they need to be recycled.
• 7:56
  Tim Montague: That's one supply chain. And then there's old projects. This is not an old project, but imagine, right? 20 year old projects. We have markets now in California where there's solar projects that have to be repowered with new technology, right? And then those old panels are coming off and either being refurbished or recycled.
• 8:17
  Adam Saghei: So, yeah, we're seeing, we're seeing it from three different silos. One, to your point, you know, there's hail damage, there's all type of environmental impacts that happen that push that life cycle to the end of line, to the end of the line. The other would be they want the latest and greatest, right? So they can get more ROI by having a more efficient panel that's that's just come out to the market. And then there's, you know, obviously breakage from installation. So you have all of these projects somewhere between one to 5% as they're installing and transporting this material, there's breakage. The way that we work is a little different than most companies. And one of the things that we initially thought of is this is a reverse logistics industry, and that's the approach that it should be looked at, not just true recycling. And we're just going to break everything down. How do you build value at every turn?
• 9:06
  Adam Saghei: So we talked to some of your some of your viewers and listeners, right, that are EPCs, that are that are installers, and say, let's work together so you're out in the farm.
• 9:16
  Adam Saghei: Something is underperforming, or there's breakage, we can train crews, whether it be their crews, or send their own, own crews, out to the farm to utilize techniques in lessening that damage and building more value in the resale portion of the business. So we dismantle, decommission larger asset owners projects, whether they be EPCs, developers, major utility scale farms, and then we transport them back to one of our facilities. We look to refurbish and remarket those assets and try to find them a second home.
• 9:56
  Adam Saghei: And what we can't recover, obviously, then gets broken down, stripped down to its real raw material that then gets injected back into, believe it or not, some really amazing new industries that are emerging.
• 10:08
  Adam Saghei: One of them, I'll use an example of sandblast mix. We're using glass that is being extracted from solar panels, and we're lessening the gap where that supplier, and I'll use that the one that we're working with in Arizona that would normally source that sandblast mix from over state lines and potentially overseas. Now that business can acquire that raw material for their finished good within 50 to 100 miles.
• 10:41
  Tim Montague: Why doesn't the glass get recycled into solar glass? Because solar glass is pretty special glass. We don't make any solar glass in the United States today. I think there's one Fauci. Factory and development. But anyway, why can it not be recycled into solar glass
• 10:55
  Adam Saghei: so it can be so that's, that's a, that's amazing point. There's some folks in the space, I would say, some within our industry right now, that are working on that. Okay, um, while that's a great discussion, and that's a great direction that the industry is headed, we decided to go to a more holistic approach. How can we bring value to other industries? Because one of the one of the challenges, the purities, right? So as the technology is getting better, within the end of life space, we're getting better purities.
• 11:21
  Adam Saghei: So sooner or later, the goal is that Coca Cola bottle that you're drinking your cola from may come from solar glass. That may be just a contribution. The goal is to do that eventually.
• 11:34
  Adam Saghei: But yes, currently, right now, there are efforts within this space to inject it back into solar glass. I think, though the bigger conversation is, how do you become part of the larger conversation? And I think, and I'll go into that a little bit later, that solar has done a great job. They need to tell a different story. They need to get other shareholders, different communities, involved in the conversation, to continue to push the solar narrative right. How do we give this clean, renewable, sustainable form of energy to everyone. If we're just saying that it's that it's clean, it's green and sustainable and it's cheap, we're not going to be able to compete with some of the other folks that are in the oil, gas and nuclear space, right? So we need to talk about a bigger narrative, and one of the ways that we're pulling people in is this. You use this every day, and I know every teenage, every teenager right now, can't live without this for more than 10 minutes. Now, if you tell someone, I'm going to take this away from you, because there are no resources to make this it's a different conversation. Yeah.
• 12:46
  Adam Saghei: Now if you tell them that the solution is solar, that the same thing that they fear when you go to these town halls and they talk about, it's going to contem it's going to give us cancer, all of the fear mongering techniques that are that are done, we can say, hey, look, we have a solution. And if this is the highest value in your value chain, we can get resources, critical materials for this. And that goes back to some of the things that we're seeing in
• 13:17
  Tim Montague: okay, but I'm not, I'm not sure I follow your point about cell phones. Obviously, there's a lot of cell phone and other electronics that need to be recycled. Are you suggesting that that's the foundation of the solar panel in recycling industry, or what's the connection? Yeah,
• 13:31
  Adam Saghei: no, I appreciate you. You wrote me back in. So I think that the a lot of the products that we use today, day to day, products, even within a laptop, a cell phone, use critical materials. They use aluminum, they use gallium, they use copper to construct and make products that we use every day, sure, and solar is a big part of that, because solar, right now holds 14% of all the silver that is mine that goes into a solar panel in the entire global market can now be extracted To make other products that we use every day. So that is the missing link. That is the missing key. And my point of all this is, is we need to broaden the conversation. Yes, we can create new solar gas. Yes, we can inject some of this material back into solar itself. But you know, you talk about right now, and we're seeing a lot of overseas conflicts and global unrest and domestic supply chain is a big part of this conversation. That's what people are concerned with. We can solve a lot of our problems, and solar will be the fruits of our labor, where we'll be able to extract some of this material from all decommissioned solar panels,
• 14:51
  Tim Montague: the Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one three phase string inverter with over eight gigawatts shipped in the US. The CPS product lineup includes string inverters ranging from 25 kW to 350 kW, their flagship inverter, the CPS 350 KW is designed to work with solar plants ranging from two megawatts to two gigawatts. CPS is the world's most bankable inverter brand and is America's number one choice for solar plants now offering solutions for commercial utility ESS and balance of system requirements go to Chintpowersystems.com or call 855-584-7168, to find out more, let's let's talk some nitty gritties here of the solar panels that you're receiving today. What percent are refurbished and what percent.
• 15:50
  Tim Montague: Percent get ground up and then sorted into their basic raw materials. Yeah,
• 15:57
  Adam Saghei: historically, we've seen about 60% we're able to what comes through our door.
• 16:00
  Adam Saghei: We're able to refurbish, okay, and remarket about 60%
• 16:06
  Tim Montague: Oh, that's much higher than I anticipated.
• 16:09
  Adam Saghei: They still have life. It is, it is. It is. And then
• 16:12
  Tim Montague: let's talk about some of the other raw materials that you're sorting them the you're basically grinding up the solar panel, right? And then how do you separate it into the various metals and glass? How does that work?
• 16:25
  Adam Saghei: Although I can't go into the all of the proprietary ways that we do it, but we do have some videos and some media out there that shows a part of the process, a part of it is mechanical. Within solar, you have, you know, you have thermal you have, it's all public knowledge. You have chemical that you're able to extract.
• 16:41
  Adam Saghei: Even more the higher purities, obviously, panels will get the frame. That have frames, they will go through a process where, you know, the glass and the back sheet and other components and parts are extracted from, you know, to that point. And then you're, you're looking at what would be a thermal or even a chemical process to do additional leaching to pull those valuable critical materials. I would say that what you're mentioning the grinding is, and that's the public's idea or or or thoughts around how it happens, but it's a little more complicated, as there's several different steps. But
• 17:17
  Tim Montague: what happens to the cells? Because the cells is one of the weakest links, right?
• 17:20
  Tim Montague: Like we do solar panel assembly in the United States, but most of the cells are made overseas.
• 17:27
  Tim Montague: We don't have a lot of cell manufacture yet in the US, it's coming, or it was coming until Congress destroyed the IRA. I mean, they're in the process of destroying the IRA, and I'm curious if that affects your business in any way, but, but what happens to the let's say you have an old solar panel and it's not refurbishable. You take off the glass, you take off the back sheet. What happens to the
• 17:52
  Adam Saghei: cells? Yeah, so the cells still have a lot of value.
• 17:56
  Adam Saghei: There's a tremendous amount of silver that's within those cells. And to your point, I think, with supply chain and how it's disrupted there, there were some issues, because we were a lot of the assembly, not the manufacturer, that was happening in the states and and still, they faced a lot of issues sourcing out the cells. Well, let's face it, aside from us, there's other companies, even manufacturers. Now, q cells just announced that they're going to take matters into their own hands and develop a in house solar recycling facility that would help them do just that, because they're looking to get cells. Are
• 18:32
  Tim Montague: they going to recycle others, also other brands, or just q cells?
• 18:36
  Adam Saghei: I believe they're gonna. It's gonna be like full first solar, which, again, these are, these are great companies, right? I, I they're on the forefront of the larger, you know, narrative, yeah, they're starting to really recycle their own material. I think it's going to be challenging for them to do all the types of materials, because I look at first solar, and they're solely focused on their material, because that's the feedstock that's needed to then manufacture their new panel. So we
• 19:04
  Tim Montague: should clarify for our audience. Some of our audience understands the subtleties of First Solar, but first solar makes a thin film solar panel. So why is first solar so forward? Thinking about recycling?
• 19:17
  Adam Saghei: I think first solar historically, because they're dealing with a predominantly glass, the thin film CAD tell panel, a lot of times, is a little more fragile, and we see more breakage happening on their end. One of
• 19:31
  Tim Montague: there's also an element called cadmium involved, which is a toxic heavy metal,
• 20:27
  Adam Saghei: correct? And by the way, those things can be recycled and they can be managed properly. We manage all types of panels, and we found that there's actually a lot of value there you and you can clean that, that cadmium and some of the contaminants and the hazardous material effectively.
• 20:46
  Adam Saghei: So they figured out that if they were to have a take back program, and take back all their their panels, just for what they manufacture, that will help help them extract that same aluminum grade that they're using.
• 20:59
  Tim Montague: Yeah, makes perfect sense for them to be circular, right? Absolutely they're using these raw materials, and they take back their panels, and that way they can recycle those materials into their manufacturing process and keep those materials out of the environment. I mean, it is very important to keep the cadmium out of the environment.
• 21:26
  Adam Saghei: And more and more people, you'll you'll start to see more and more folks do that.
• 21:27
  Adam Saghei: Our business model is a little different, because we're solely in the business of all panels.
• 21:28
  Adam Saghei: But more and more I'm seeing manufacturers step up. There's some other folks that are looking at to your point, I want to go back to it for a second.
• 21:34
  Adam Saghei: They're designing panels for the end of life so that they're more easily the. Constructed at the end of life, right? And so we're so we're seeing, we're seeing a huge shift. A lot of these folks that are on the front end of the business, manufacturing, developing projects, saying, well, we need, we need to do a better job selling this technology. We need to be able to make it circular. Because when we go into these town halls, you know, we're getting the folks that are are very resistant, and so, as I mentioned before, so I'm very excited about the fact that, you know, you have manufacturers that are stepping up. You have companies like us going and building value at every part of the of the chain, and now taking even hazardous material and saying, Hey, we can clean this and we can get this back in the supply chain to be reutilized.
• 22:27
  Tim Montague: All right, so, yeah, I mean, this still seems like a big black box, I think, and I hope that you can shed a little more light on on this, you know, for our listeners and for prosumers, because this comes up in hearings about solar projects, consumers think solar panels contaminate the land.
• 22:48
  Tim Montague: It's a complete misnomer. Solar panels are hermetically sealed to be waterproof, right? There's nothing leaking out of normal functioning solar cells. Now, if the solar panel is cracked, it is conceivable that some material would leak out. It would be very slow if it did leak out. I don't think any of these materials are necessarily soluble in water, for example.
• 23:12
  Tim Montague: But once you grind up a solar panel, you've got dust of all flavors, right? That's potentially flying around and yeah, just break it down for us.
• 23:20
  Tim Montague: What happens to these materials?
• 23:23
  Tim Montague: You mentioned the sandblast sand. Okay, the glass is getting recycled into sandblast sand.
• 23:26
  Tim Montague: That sounds good. I mean, sand can be in short supply. A very sand comes in all flavors, and some of it is highly valuable.
• 23:35
  Tim Montague: We mine sand from the Great Lakes region. Okay, here in the Midwest, like dunes, entire dune regions get destroyed because they're mining the sand for industrial processes, and we want less of that. We want to recycle more products into the feedstock. But what happens to the aluminum, to the silicon, to the silver and anything else that is of
• 23:59
  Adam Saghei: value? No, no. So that's a great point. So one of the things that within the process, that that that happens is, if you're able to separate all of these materials, because there's different layers, right?
• 24:08
  Adam Saghei: So, for instance, the aluminum that's the low hanging fruit, right? Aluminum, when you strip off the frames of a panel, 70% extruder aluminum, there are several industries and smelters that will take that and create different products, and and one of them would will be newer frames for solar panels. When you talk about the silicon, a lot of the material that we extract, they're very similar to your sneakers or your that Eva, that that, that material, that that we extract, there comes, you know, yoga mats, sneakers, they can be extracted to be sent off to a facility that creates these new products, just like those yoga mats, right? And so the
• 24:52
  Tim Montague: silicon metal can't be recycled into other electronics,
• 24:56
  Adam Saghei: so that that material, as you have to take some of the metals out, right?
• 24:59
  Adam Saghei: So, because there's still, still some metals within those cells, as we take out some of the silver, the silicon, the silicon itself can be used in manufacturing for chips and other microprocessors, because there's still value there, and it's being sold at the raw state. What is happening as the industry is moving forward is they're able to refine that to even higher grades that will be injected into other spaces. But currently, today, I don't believe, and I do believe, in the next two to two to three years, the industry will be able to do this, to refine that clean enough to then inject back into the solar space. But it's just not there yet. So we're utilizing a less pure mixture, if you will, if you will, to get it to other processors that will get it injected into microprocessors for other industries. So we will get there from the solar front. It just won't happen today, because the technology is still evolving, but it doesn't go to waste. So in other words, it doesn't go to waste. It's all being captured.
• 26:05
  Tim Montague: Yeah, in the decommissioning. Let's talk about decommissioning. I'm curious. Let's, you know, let's just take a scenario that we're talking about aged solar projects. This is rooftop and ground mount solar projects that are 20 years old and they're going to be repowered so you're tearing off the old solar panels. What is it cost the asset owner to do this? Because it sounds like what you're doing is pretty highly energetic. It's got to cost money, but obviously you're also selling products from the process. So use solar panels in. In what does a developer or an asset owner have to pay you to take those materials and then you're obviously injecting some process value, so to speak, and then squirting out raw materials?
• 26:56
  Tim Montague: Yeah, I'm trying to understand the math and the economics of this industry, like, why do you exist? And is that, are those economics really working right
• 27:08
  Adam Saghei: now? So yes, and they working out beautifully, because, again, recycling is not free. There's a cost to it. So for a D to D physically decommission a site, that's a service that we provide, and we charge for that service. The other part of it is that we're able to either incentivize the asset owner to reduce their recycling costs by reclaiming resell value, refurbishing and reselling and remarketing that material. So we do, on the back end, receive or are able to resell the reuse material, and even on the worst case scenario, the recycling, we're able to sell the raw commodities that we break down, everything has a price, aluminum, glass, yeah, all of so our model works in in in the billables up front, which we are able to service a client, do the actual recycling up front, that's a charge. And then on the back end, it is the resell of the material as well as the commodities. So the model works. In fact, it works so well, and there's several companies now jumping into the space. Long term, the goal is to perfect the technology, make it even more effective and efficient, so that you get the cost close to what the landfill would would cost that consumer, so that you avoid it all together. Because if 90% of the panels end up in the solar the landfill today, that won't be the case. We're going to incentivize folks by creating a an alternative that financially makes sense. It's going to be as inexpensive as the landfill, if not even less expensive because we're able to extract higher purities. And the other part of it is, I believe in the next few years, other industries will be created within the supply chain space will get additional support with better operations from other supply chain companies to then again, to your point, how do we get how do we get it back to solar glass, right? We need more off takers, right? And we're seeing all those folks within the manufacturing space open up here in the US. So it's a whole collective effort. But today, it's today. It makes sense, financial sense. I believe tomorrow it's going to make even more financial sense for all the parties.
• 29:33
  Tim Montague: You said something that is very troubling though.
• 29:35
  Tim Montague: You said that 90% of solar panels that are being that are coming off of projects are going to landfill, correct? And where is that happening? Like because I think of most of the older solar panels are in California.
• 29:51
  Tim Montague: Maybe I'm wrong, and California certainly does not allow for landfilling of solar panels. So how are those solar panels ending up in landfill?
• 30:01
  Adam Saghei: Um, sometimes they're going across state lines. Is that legal? That's no that's not entirely appropriate.
• 30:09
  Adam Saghei: But I think, I think people are doing it. I think this space is getting a lot more is getting more regulated. It was the Wild Wild West, and again, we're building a new industry. So as a, you know, as a,
• 30:22
  Tim Montague: you're one of the good guys. I'm not trying. No, no, no. I wear your finger at anybody. I want to understand. I want to have credible information for consumers, though, and I want energy professionals to understand what is happening in the industry, and where do we need to shine a light and lean in. You mentioned becoming cost competitive with landfill. Okay, obviously we need to ban landfilling of E waste period in all jurisdictions. Apparently, that isn't the case. Yet, we banded in Illinois, and there are special recycling programs all over the state where they collect e waste and then it goes to a special recycling facility, usually in some other state, but, and which is potentially troubling, right? Because it could be going to a state where they allow it to be landfill them, and it's, you know, not getting recycled. Hey, guys, are you a residential solar installer doing light commercial but wanting to scale into large CNI solar? I'm Tim Montague.
• 31:19
  Tim Montague: I've developed over 150 megawatts of commercial solar, and I've solved the problem that you're having you don't know what tools and technologies you need in order to successfully close 100 KW to megawatt scale projects. I've developed a commercial solar accelerator to help installers Exactly. Like you, just go to cleanpowerhour.com, click on strategy and book a call today.
• 31:48
  Tim Montague: It's totally free with no obligation. Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate you listening to the pod, and I'm Tim Montague. Let's grow solar and storage. Go to clean power hour and click strategy today. Thanks so much. But let's talk about that regulation piece. Obviously, you're up on what is the latest and greatest and where, where is this industry going? So we're starting to
• 32:14
  Adam Saghei: see some great, great steps forward in in helping all parties do the right thing. So one of the things that we've seen is Governor Abbott in Texas just passed a bill that all the material within Texas has to go to proper recycling.
• 32:28
  Adam Saghei: You know, Texas is a great it's a huge state.
• 32:30
  Tim Montague: 11 gigawatts have installed solar in 2024 I mean, it's a massive solar market.
• 32:35
  Adam Saghei: They're, they've surpassed California right now, right number one in that space.
• 32:37
  Adam Saghei: Yeah. And they, they weren't required to do so. That law just came into effect. State of Washington, who's adopted also another piece of legislation that is more of a take back program. We're going to see other states follow suit. And one of the things that you know to your point that 90% that does, and again, we you know, and it's not here where I'm not here to point the fingers. We don't own the assets, right?
• 33:03
  Adam Saghei: We're here to help. Yeah, we want to see them as a business model. We want them all to come to, you know, to us, however, we know that this has happened. But you know, as the price of recycling decreases, because we're able to get better purities and get more money for the commodities on the other end, and it does happen through education as well. So we're educating a lot of the a lot of the asset owners on how to properly manage because there's a whole chapter in how to manage waste. And so by doing that, what we're seeing is we're seeing those numbers come down, and I do think that as other states adopt some of the some of this policy, you will see more and more more of a more regulated industry right now.
• 33:51
  Adam Saghei: It's kind of figuring it out as it goes along. And again, I'm extremely grateful, even though that we're their competitors, but there's a lot of other folks jumping into the space to make sure that there's access, right?
• 34:07
  Adam Saghei: Because, you know, we're nationwide, but you need more. I mean, even if we did what we do, if we quadruple our our throughput, we would still only solve 25% of the problem. That's how large of a impact that this would have. But going back to it, you know, I don't want to focus in on the negative. I think where that 90% is today, it's decreasing because I think it is getting more accessible,
• 34:36
  Tim Montague: folks. Or do you think we are away from capturing and reusing 90% instead of the inverse, like, how many years away is that? Is it five years?
• 34:46
  Tim Montague: 10 years?
• 34:48
  Adam Saghei: I think we're probably like three to five. And I say that because the industry is growing or moving at a very rapid pace. I think the one thing that you mentioned, the one thing that would just flip that switch instantly is if there was a federal mandated policy change to force asset owners to do that, and that's not in that's not in place right now. There's a few states that have adopted, you know, Hawaii, California, with some of the regulations that they put into place, as well as Texas, as I mentioned, and a take back program in Washington State. So it's coming. It's, I think, what we're we're trying to, although we love that idea of policy kicking in, we're, I see of it, more of it, of of how do we build additional value? We need to bring the cost down. We need to, we need to be able to get a better finished product to our off takers that are taking this material, and then we need to create, with our help, as well as other folks that are much smarter than I am, to develop new industries to be able to utilize this material in local markets. And so there's a lot happening, and there's a lot more that we can do as a community, but I do see us going in the right direction, but that federal policy would make it happen like this.
• 36:07
  Tim Montague: All right, well, unfortunately, we're out of time. Adam II really appreciate your time and knowledge and reach out to me if you are a solar installer looking for better information about recycling. Check out all of our content at cleanpowerhour.com Please give us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify.
• 36:25
  Tim Montague: Follow us on YouTube and connect with me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from my listeners. Adam Saghei, how can our listeners find you sure
• 36:36
  Adam Saghei: LinkedIn or werecyclesolar.com and I really appreciate you bringing. The subject to light, and more importantly, all of your listeners and viewers that have access to so to this type of material, before you just write it off as waste, find out if you can get paid for it first,
• 36:57
  Tim Montague: indeed. All right, thank you. Adam Saghei, with Werecyclesolar. With that, I'll say, let's grow solar and storage. Take care. Thank you. Applause.