The other week Specialized announced a program to recycle carbon fiber in conjunction with Materials Innovation Technologies. Earlier this year Trek also announced a similar program. Instead of standard recycling
program it is part of a process called downcycling; where you convert a waste material into a new material of lesser quality.
For the bicycle industry the process involves collecting waste carbon fiber which consists of:
- raw fabric scraps
- unrepairable frames
- objects used for destructive testing
- mold tooling
- non-conforming molded objects
- misc.
According to research from Materials Innovation Tech. and research from Recycled Carbon Fibre Ltd. the recovered short whisker fibers retain around 90-95% of their original strength and come in at a much lower cost. Some applications for recycled short whisker carbon fiber are but not limited to conductive flocking, metal replacement, concrete reinforcements, replacing glass fibers, thermoplastic molding additive, etc…
While carbon fiber recycling is still a new industry it is certainly an important one to be further researched and grown. Until then we will do our part by continuing our repair services to help breathe life back into retired or damaged bikes.