ChaseAleny wrote:One important factor to consider when using solar panels is their environmental impact when it comes to disposal.
I have. There are toxic chemicals in solar panels that, in large amounts, could cause problems.
When you consider industrial capacity solar "farms", vs wind farms, vs coal fired plants, natural gas plants, nuclear plants, etc., each has serious environmental costs that include disposal costs. Is it worth it in order to have and maintain today's society vs a pre-industrial society? Probably--lifespans, quality of life, etc. are all considerably higher than they were, say, 150 years ago. Historically, engineering has always found ways to solve society's technical problems, and there is no particular reason to suppose that won't happen with the relatively newly recognized environmental costs.
The lifecycle costs of any method of producing electricity is important to consider, one reason electric vehicles aren't quite the panacea some seem to think they are. (But I'll shut up about that--several here have made their opinions clear to me, informed or otherwise!)
But here, we're not talking about industrial sized power plants, we're talking about relatively small solar panels to operate a teardrop. A single panel, errantly thrown in a landfill, rather than recycled as e-waste as it should be, honestly isn't going to affect the landfill's environment significantly. All of the solar panels used by all of the RVers in the world are a drop in the bucket compared to industrial sized solar plants tied to the grid. As Tony says, the trade for the individual RVer is whether to use solar panels or burn fossil fuels, which, if nothing else, pollutes the local environment with fumes and noise.
Is camping without electricity an option? Sure, unless you need a CPAP machine. Those folks might stay home and consume electricity from the grid. Hardly an improvement for the environment, and deeply disappointing, I'm sure, for those who enjoy and respect nature. If you do camp without electricity, what about your flashlights? The energy to charge the batteries came from somewhere, and there is a disposal cost to those batteries. Camping with candles is an option, but with the danger of burning down the forest. (And, how much energy did it cost to produce the candle?)
All sorts of trades to consider (and little detailed information to make an informed choice), but truly, using solar panels and, at the end of their life sending them to an e-waste facility, is not a particularly bad option, environmentally.
Tom