Environmental benefits of recovering and reusing end-of-life photovoltaic glass in alternative applications: a life cycle assessment of broken glass and whole glass sheets

The global deployment of photovoltaic (PV) systems will lead to a significant end-of-life waste challenge in the future. Recycling these end-of-life PV modules, especially the glass component, offers substantial environmental benefits by reducing waste and minimizing resource depletion. However, most existing studies examine only one end-of-life management option for PV glass and do not compare it with other possible pathways. Additionally, the reuse of intact glass in alternative applications, rather than in PV module production, has not been explored. Therefore, this study aims to fill these gaps by conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA) that evaluates multiple utilization pathways for recovered low-purity PV glass, including the reuse of whole glass in glasshouses, and the use of broken glass (cullet) in concrete, foam glass, and window glass production. The results show that under the assumptions of this study, reusing intact PV glass provides the highest environmental benefits with our assumptions, with nearly 91% of the climate change impact being avoided, compared to glasshouse production with virgin materials. Significant benefits were also observed in fossil depletion, metal depletion, and water depletion. Scenario analysis indicates that providing credits for recovered byproducts can further enhance these environmental benefits. However, inclusion of PV waste collection and transportation leads to an increase in environmental impacts.