Sanyo Component Europe has signed a binding participation agreement with PV Cycle, an organisational structure for common collection and recycling of end-of-life photovoltaic modules.

PV Cycle has 107 members in the organisation, which together represents more than 85% of the European photovoltaic market.

Sanyo is the first member to sign the contract.

It is estimated that 1.4 million tons of photovoltaic modules have been sold in Europe before 2010 and some of these are already waste.

In 2010 alone, 6,000MWp of photovoltaic modules will be sold in Europe and with an average weight of 100t / MWp, which represents a future waste of 600,000t.