Giving Compass' Take:

• Josh Brown explains how solar panel makers must balance durability and recyclability as the two are often counterproductive to each other. 

• How can funders work to develop solar panels that have the lowest environmental impact? 

• Learn about battery-based storage systems and solar. 

Solar power has seen a boom, but what happens to all the panels in a few decades when they’re no longer useful? And what about electronic devices with even shorter life spans?

Those questions are at the heart of new research that looks into the impact of government policies that aim to reduce the amount of electronics waste filling up landfills.

“There is a lot of concern in sustainability circles that manufacturers are making things with shorter and shorter life spans, and products are perhaps even intentionally made to become obsolete to induce replacement purchases,” says Beril Toktay, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology’s Scheller College of Business.

The study, which appears in the journal Management Science, focuses on government policies used to encourage electronics makers to put more thought into what happens at the end of the product life cycle. Those programs, called extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws and are already in use in some states, have two common objectives: to have producers design their products to be easier to recycle or to boost their durability for increased device life span.

However, the researchers report that those goals are often at odds.

“What we have found is that sometimes when you design for recyclability, you give up on durability, and when durability is the goal, recyclability is sacrificed,” Toktay says.

Read the full article about durability and recyclability by Josh Brown at Futurity.