Saturday saw the opening of a community Solar re-use centre, the very first of its kind in Australia, at the Moruya Transfer Station.

Lisa Cornthwaite from Repurposing for Resilience is behind the venture and spoke at the opening.

“Environmental stewardship, refers to the responsible use and protection of our natural environment, through conservation efforts and sustainable practices.

Everyone is accountable, and everyone has a role to play.

So, this is exciting. Because today is the official opening of, what we believe to be, the very first community solar reuse centre of its kind! Standing around us is not a million-dollar building or a high-profile site. What is here is the product of a grass roots organisation, being accountable and playing that role I just mentioned in environmental stewardship. And there’s power in that.

Look at all the grass roots organisations represented here today, dedicated volunteers working together to achieve practical results towards a common goal, often overcoming hopelessness of inaction by achieving results and recreating hope.

You see there is more than 3.3million homes in Australia who have installed solar panels. This growing uptake of solar in our country continues to be driven by rising energy costs and largely incentivised by the Federal Governments small scale technology certificates scheme in place since 2010.

It’s a genius scheme, but it only applies new panels. So, what did we think we were going to do with all those solar panels coming off roofs and why is it becoming a real problem now? We live in an age in a place where we assume that we are entitled to instant gratification regardless of consequence. Our social and economic systems reflect that. We don’t really plan ahead too far as a result.

I am guessing that as panels come with a warranty of 10-30 years, we probably didn’t think about the complete cycle until it came around and started pushing us.

We are seeing more and more consumers replacing solar panels long before their expiry, encouraged to do so by sales hype, short sited application of governing oversite and throw away economics.

By 2030, that’s only 6 years away, they are predicting solar panels will make up over 145,000 tonnes of waste. Could you imagine what over 7 million discarded solar panels would look like?

Of these we could assume between 3 and 5 million panels would still be operational. All of these panels don’t just break down or magically dissolve in earth and water.

Without intervention, these panels end up in landfill at worst, or sent to Industrial Materials Recyclers.

Recycling, yep, much better than landfill. But a long way from being the best solution to the problem.

Panels rarely just stop working. Rather they lose efficiency over time.

So why would we send a useful working panel which is still within its manufacturer’s warranty period halfway across the country to a recycling centre to be pulled apart, at a disproportionate fiscal and environmental cost.

As I said a moment ago, unless we intervene it’s either landfill or recycling. So, we’re intervening.

Through this new centre, we’re intervening by intercepting, reusing and repurposing prior to recycling.

We will take these discarded panels. We will test them and process them through 3 channels.

1. Those that test to safety standards and manufacturers specifications will be made available for resale and with warranty. This should provide consumer confidence in a second-hand market and makes solar even more affordable to our community.

2. Those that do not meet manufacturers specifications but still aesthetically pleasing as you will, will be made available for repurposing into other useful items.

3. Which should leave us with a muchly reduced number of physically broken panels that yes, will need to be sent to recycling plants.

This simple intervention instantly diverts all solar panels and associated industry components from landfill.

If it’s done at a local level like this, it will also reduce our footprint on the environment through transport.

This simple intervention saves both you and the council money. It’s free to drop off undamaged panels.

It’s not free to drop off undamaged panels, that need to be shipped for recycling. This intervention provides opportunities for employment and training.

For new industry in repurposing waste into functional items and as you will see in our art exhibition, into beautiful things.

This intervention offers solutions to other environmental issues, using waste, yes waste.

And yes, this simple solution, of applying circular economy principles, will only grow from here.

We have plans and strategy which address other waste stream issues, problems that if you are aware of them, probably keep you awake some nights too.

We very much hope to recruit more active members, more like minded community organisations, more interest and importantly more funding.

Thank you for the parts that many of you have played in helping us to get to this point. Thank you for joining us to celebrate. And thank you for your future support as we translate these early results into lasting impacts.”