The new and growing problem of recyling solar panels

Here's a problem I didn't see coming (like we need more problems...) Solar panels have been really popular in the last couple of decades, and very successful in advancing the cause of carbon-free, pollution-free power generation. But even solar panels don't last forever, and many are now getting towards the end of their working lives, and will need to be disposed of.
The disposal, or preferably recylinging, of solar panels is something that they young industry does not seem to have put much thought into. By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency estimates there will be 78 million metric tons of dead solar panels to be dealt with, increasing by 6 million metric tons each year thereafter. So, although this pales into insignificance at the side of all the other e-waste humanity produces, it is not a small problem. And standard electronics recycling methods are not appropriate to solar panels.
The most valuable materials in solar panels are silver and silicon. But the silicon cells are sandwiched between films of polymers and glass, and the whole is held in an almuminum frame. The junction boxes and cables contain valuable copper wiring. Solar panels also include toxic materials like lead that we do not want leaching out of landfills into our groundwater. A typical e-waste recycler would merely strip the aluminum and copper and just trash the rest as "impure glass". The recycled value of a solar panel may be as little as $3 on this basis, while it can cost anywhere from $12 to $25 to process. So, from an economic point of view as well as an environmental one, it behooves us to find a way to also recycle the copper, the aluminum, the glass, the silver, the silicon, the lead, even the tiny traces of rare earth metals.
The EU already requires solar panel producers to responsibly recycle their products at the end of their lives, and Japan, India and Australia are bringing in such rules, but there is no such requirement in North America, nor in most of the rest of the world. Best estimates suggest that no more than 10% is actually being recycled in a voluntary system. There are only a small number of dedicated Solar PV recyclijg companies, including Veolia in France and Recycle PV Solar in the USA.
Research, such as that at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US, is ongoing into more comprehensive and cost effective recycling techniques for solar panels, and there is research in Europe on how used solar panels can be re-used and re-purposed (although we have to be careful not to just ship old panels out to developing countries with poor regulatory systems, thereby merely dumping our intransigent problems onto poor countries). But the bottom line is: we're not there yet, and we really should be.