With every manufacture and installation of a renewable or flexible energy product, it’s important to keep the environment at the forefront of our minds. Sun, wind and water are free, but the infrastructure required to capture and use this energy isn’t – it costs money and it emits carbon.

So the transition to a more circular economy means the value of products, materials and resources is maintained in the economy for as long as possible, and the generation of waste is minimised.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates 1.7 to 8 million tons of photovoltaic panel waste for 2030 and 60 to 78 million tons by 2050, cumulatively. Photovoltaic panels do lose efficiency but that doesn’t mean they can’t be useful for someone or something else.

We can now recover critical metals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel, from home energy storage batteries, which can be reused in new battery production, thus creating a closed-loop system that reduces dependence on the new extraction of these minerals and reduces ethical concerns regarding labour practices and human rights violations in some mining regions.

And the batteries from electric vehicles – once they reach a certain life cycle, they could still be used for storing energy in your home.