SOLARCYCLE, a solar panel recycling company, began commercial operations on January 29, 2026 at its solar panel recycling plant in Cedartown, Georgia, built to process up to 5 gigawatts of retired panels a year, the same unit used to size a power plant, applied here to measure how much solar panel material the plant can handle each year. The plant recovers 96% of the material value inside each retired panel, the silver, copper, aluminum, glass and critical minerals a new panel would otherwise require mining or manufacturing from scratch, and sends none of it to a landfill. The plant answers a gap in the United States today, where only 10% of solar panels are recycled, according to reporting that itself credits a Yale Environment 360 analysis.
Inside the solar panel recycling plant in Cedartown Georgia
The Cedartown facility covers 255,000 square feet and already processes thousands of retired panels a week, working toward a target of 1 million panels a year by the end of 2026.
Our recycling facility in Cedartown represents a step-change in how we're delivering end-of-life infrastructure.
Suvi Sharma, chief executive and co founder of SOLARCYCLE. Source 1.
The United States figure is from source 3, itself attributed inside that article to a Yale Environment 360 report. The 2 Cedartown figures are from source 1.
Show the numbers
| United States recycling rate today | 10 |
| Value recovered at Cedartown | 96 |
| Landfill diversion at Cedartown | 100 |
The 500 million dollar project that split into 2 phases
SOLARCYCLE first announced the Cedartown site in February 2024 as a single 344 million dollar project combining the recycling plant with a solar glass factory, promising more than 600 jobs, a figure that describes the 2024 announcement rather than a current headcount. Construction on the combined project stopped in June 2025 over uncertainty about the federal tax credits the company was relying on, at a point where its reported cost had grown to 500 million dollars with 50 million dollars already spent. The recycling plant reached its original 2026 target anyway. The glass factory did not. Reading the 2 SOLARCYCLE announcements together, 16 months apart, is what shows a single planned project splitting into 2 phases rather than 1 continuous build reaching a single finish line.
The recycling and glass figures are the 2 pieces of the Cedartown campus, both from source 1. The third bar is the share of the glass factory planned output committed to 1 customer, Illuminate USA, reported in source 2, not a separate site.
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| Recycling plant | 5 |
| Glass factory | 5 |
| Illuminate USA supply deal | 3 |
What comes next for the glass factory
The glass factory now carries its own later timeline, a groundbreaking planned for the middle of 2026 and first production in 2028. Illuminate USA has already signed a 5 year supply agreement for enough recycled glass to support 3 gigawatts of solar panel production a year, an agreement the 2 companies describe as the first of its kind in the United States.
SOLARCYCLE's first-of-its-kind facility is a transformational investment for the Polk County community and will help drive its economy for years to come.
Brian Kemp, Governor of Georgia, quoted in the February 2024 announcement of the Cedartown project. Source 4.
The Environmental Protection Agency publishes a page on solar panel recycling that cites a 2016 International Renewable Energy Agency estimate, that the value of recoverable material sitting inside retired solar panels worldwide will reach about 450 million dollars by 2030, equal to the raw material cost of about 60 million new panels. Cedartown is 1 answer to that value going unclaimed today.