Should We Design Clean Energy Tech for Recycling?

As clean energy becomes more and more important, companies are devising creative ways to make electricity using sustainable sources like solar power and wind turbines. In the process, they’re creating products that need to be reused, recycled or repurposed as much as possible – but most of them don’t consider how these systems can be easily taken apart and put back together when it’s time to dispose of them. To recycle clean energy tech effectively, use these three tips from experts in the field.

 1) Develop designs for easy disassembly  

It’s no secret that clean energy tech is becoming more popular, but there’s a big problem: Not only do companies need to develop renewable technology, they also need to build it with recycling in mind. That means making it easy to disassemble so that people can take parts out and recycle them rather than letting them go into landfills. After all, it only makes sense: The less junk we throw away, the cleaner our environment will be. But not everyone is convinced. Some experts have argued that building clean tech requires an entirely new mindset—and that designing tech for modularity could make things too complicated; maybe, then, it’s better to just design stuff to last until its end of life? What are your thoughts on sustainable tech design? Does it need to be designed for both durability and ease of disassembly or modularity? Why? Why not? Or does sustainability boil down to something simpler altogether? Let us know what you think!

2) Include a cradle-to-cradle life cycle in design

When designing new clean energy technologies, we need to take into account how these products will be recycled once they’ve outlived their usefulness. In fact, there are a number of compelling reasons why any piece of technology should be designed with recycling in mind from day one. First, it would eliminate an entire category of waste that builds up on our planet and poses serious environmental concerns; second, it would create a secondary market for clean tech components that could help bring down costs.
So what does it mean to design something for recycling? Ideally, products would have a cradle-to-cradle life cycle. For example, a wind turbine might only last 10 years, but its components could be easily disassembled and re-used elsewhere. This is an admittedly difficult task given that there are so many different pieces of clean tech out there and no clear definition of how they should be recycled. Still, we need to start thinking about these issues now if we want future generations to enjoy a cleaner world.

3) Use materials with low toxicity

Many clean energy sources, such as solar panels and wind turbines, use rare-earth elements to increase efficiency. However, recycling these materials is difficult; they’re not designed to be disassembled and need highly toxic chemicals to separate them from other materials. Instead of using these materials to improve efficiency—or even simply making sure our technology uses fewer rare-earth elements—should we instead design clean energy tech for recyclability so that we can easily reuse it in future technologies? What do you think? Share your thoughts on Twitter using #BuiltToRecycle. For more details about recycling high-tech components, read our past post: Could This Material Make Solar Power Twice As Efficient? Using recycled material is key to fighting climate change : All those scientists have found a way to safely store radioactive waste inside diamonds! How cool is that? Here’s some important questions that come with developing new ways to utilize existing material and helping out with global warming. First, what if you could develop a better phone without generating new material…would you do it?