Earlier quoted context omitted.
That just dumping old solar panels into the landfill will cause Cu, Pb, As, Cr to spread into the ground effectively contaminating it. The government is trying to ban dumping it and trying to impose a responsibility to manufacturers to properly recycle and decontaminate it, which will cost about 4~5 times more than dumping.
Oh no, copper! Chromium! Next you're going to tell me of the fiendish plot to incorporate these into pots and pans to poison us all. There is no reason to include As in PV. There are anti-renewable propaganda screeds that pretend otherwise ("look! GaAs PV cells are a thing, therefore all PV uses As!") That leaves lead. Lead has been used for connections, but it is being phased out, not least because of EU environment…
You speak with a tone of authority - do you have deep expertise and knowledge in this field? Yes or no? Please don't dodge the question.
This is the best article I could find with about 10 minutes of googling. I have excerpted a small portion, but there is more relevant information immediately following this portion.
This does not sound like a solved problem to me, at all.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338195279_An_overvi...
3. Global photovoltaic market and waste generation The market share of solar panels by technology group is shown in Fig. 4. Currently, the volume of comprehensive connected PV panels is rising sharply. Rapid growth is anticipated in the coming years with the typical useful life of a solar panel of 25 years [1,12]. However, it is expected that the total quantity of PV panels EOL will reach 9.57 million tonnes by 2050 [4]. In 2014, the market was dominated by silicon-based c-Si panels, which accounted for a 92% share of the market with those based on CdTe technology at 5%, copper indium gallium (di) selenide (CIGS) at 2%, with 1% accounted for by those manufactured from other materials (dye-sensitized, CPV, organic hybrids) [4,14,15]. The market share of c-Si PV panels is projected to decrease from 92% to 44.8% between 2014 and 2030 [13,14]. The third-generation PV panels are predicted to reach 44.1%, from a base of 1% in 2014, over the same period [4,13–15]. Solar PV panels will probably lose efficiency over time, whereby the operational life is 20–30 years at least [7,13,16]. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimated that at the end of 2016, there were around 250,000 metric tonnes of solar panel waste globally [12]. The solar panels contain lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd) and many other harmful chemicals that could not be removed if the entire panel is cracked [17–19]. In November 2016, the Environment Minister of Japan advised that Japan’s production of solar panel waste per year is expected to rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tonnes by 2040 and the country has no plans to dispose of them safely and effectively [17,20]. A recent statement found that the Toshiba Environmental Solutions will take approximately 19 years for reprocessing all solar massive waste of Japan produced by 2020 [21]. The yearly waste will be 70–80 times higher by 2034 than the year before 2020 [21]. China with a larger number of solar plants, currently operates around two times as many solar panels as USA and has no proposals for the dumping of the whole old panels. Despite the presence of environmental awareness, California, another world leader in solar panels, also has no waste disposal plan. At the end of their useful lives, only Europe requires the manufactures of solar panels to collect and dump solar waste. Although solar panels were disposed of on regular sites, it is not advisable because the modules can degrade, and harmful chemicals can leach into the ground causing drinking water contamination [22]. The lifetime of PV modules has been estimated for 25 years. Therefore, it can be assumed that the installed PV power (MW) becomes waste after that period. To identify the time shifting, the years of installation and the years of waste generation may be denoted as x and y, respectively where y ¼ xþ25 [1].