Solar panels are going to landfill in Australia while the federal Labor government's $25 million recycling scheme sits on hold.

The programme, announced as the government's flagship response to the country's mounting end-of-life photovoltaic stream, has yet to begin operations. The result is a visible gap between policy commitment and processing capacity: decommissioned and damaged panels that should be entering a dedicated recovery chain are instead being buried.

That gap matters for the material stream itself. A crystalline silicon panel contains recoverable fractions of glass, aluminium framing, copper wiring, silicon cells and small quantities of silver and other metals. Every panel landfilled represents lost commodity value and, in some module types, potential leaching risk. It also pushes the cost of disposal onto councils, installers and households rather than internalising it in the product chain.

The $25 million commitment was framed as seed funding to build Australian PV recycling capacity — the collection logistics, disassembly lines and downstream offtake needed to handle a stream that will grow sharply as the first large waves of rooftop installations, deployed in the 2000s and 2010s, reach end of life.

The scheme's delay leaves that build-out unstarted. Without an operating federal framework, panel recovery depends on a patchwork of small private operators and council drop-off services, most of which lack the throughput or economics to process volumes at scale.

The hold-up also weakens the signal to investors. Recycling firms weighing capital commitments for PV dismantling and material recovery lines need certainty on volumes, gate fees and any product stewardship obligations before they commit funds. A scheme that is announced but not running provides none of that.

What happens next turns on the federal government moving the $25 million programme from announcement to operation — publishing its design, confirming how funds will be allocated, and setting the deadlines against which its delivery can be tracked.