How sport is accelerating circular innovation for carbon fibre

Around 80% of Winter Olympic sports and 50% of Summer Olympic sports use carbon fibre in their equipment. Indeed, according to Dan Reading, sport is the industry that uses the third-largest amount of carbon fibre for high performance equipment.

The problem is that carbon fibre is very difficult to repurpose when equipment is broken or no longer fit for purpose.

But as part of the Carbon Fibre Circular Alliance, Reading has helped to accelerate a method to extract material from unwanted products to be used again in new pieces of equipment. In this podcast, Reading and Carbon Fibre Circular Alliance colleagues Bill Severa and Lourens Blok explain what they’ve done and how they’re taking the project forward.

Episode #78 talking points:

– Sport’s role in accelerating the repurposing of carbon fibre from unwanted or broken equipment

– Progress made on the development of a tennis racket produced with 50% recycled carbon fibre

– How the technology used to extract and realign the carbon fibre can scale up