What is toxic in solar panels? While I'd love it if they would actually recycle the silver, copper, and 99.99% pure silicon, most of the time it ends up the same place the fiberglass turbines do: ground into industrial sand for concrete. Also the aluminum is already recycled anyway. There are several recyclers for solar panels popping up as the scale of solar increases to better take advantage of the materials, but they are already fully recycled Also coal plants are shutting down and being edged out by natural gas anyway. I don't know what sources you are using, but they are either out of date or wrong.