Comparative Analysis of Recycled Content in Metals used for Photovoltaic Applications

For a sustainable economy, waste generation of PV applications should be reduced by increasing circularity. Hereby it is required that the product circularity can be assessed quantitatively with a circularity metric. Data required to evaluate such circularity metrics can be known by the manufacturer, but these parties often lack knowledge on data on metal recycling, making it is necessary to provide optimal estimation. This study aimed to identify the recycled content (RC) of metals in Europe by performing a comparative analysis. The consulted sources that report on metal recycling are Ecoinvent (2009), the Eurostat database (2022), a technical report from the EU published at the JRC repository (2018) and the United Nations Environment Program (2011). Additionally, for aluminum, steel and silver information of trade associations is consulted. Using these sources, an overview of the RC of metals is created. Moreover, a ‘best estimate’ is selected based on the relevance of the consulted data. It can be concluded that the RC differs among metals and sometimes report inconsistent data. Another finding is that currently no standardized method of monitoring the RC of metals exists. This illustrates the importance of this study.