A Commitment to Reducing Landfill Waste
The founder of Carbon Fiber Recycling, Doug Griffin started out in the recycling business in Bethel, CT. Doug has always had a strong commitment to recycling and to keep waste out of landfills. Anything that he came across on worksites and demolitions, he thought about ways to reuse and potentially breakdown into usable materials. Doug set up a lab at his recycling plant, experiments and built prototypes and small reactors to recycling all the waste that gets thrown into landfills, from asphalt roofing to plastics, even old toilets where crushed to be used in road building materials.
It was in his lab, where Doug developed a process to recycle carbon fiber, reducing the glues into usable by products, and develop a continuous flow processing system to produce recycled carbon fiber at low cost and in large quantities. Doug made several prototypes and worked with chemists and engineers to tweak and test his ideas. By 2018, Doug and his partner Tim decided they had enough experience to build a large recycling plant, and the numbers to make it work.
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure ”
-Colin Powell
Tim Spahn talking to students about how Carbon Fiber Recycling recycles carbon fiber in Bethel, CT
A Commitment to the Next Generation
CFR is commited to educating the next generation about the innovative technology used at Carbon Fiber Recycling. Since 2018, CFR has been working with local teens at their CT facility in Bethel CT. Teens have worked on projects in recycling and reusing plastics, as well as carbon fiber. They have also participated in CFR as a marketing team. Both Doug Griffin and Tim Spahn have mentored teens on their projects.
“Teens today are more interested than any other generation in cleaning up the planet.”
-Tim Spahn
Our goal is to inspire the next generation to take on big projects that will minimize the amount of waste ending up in landfills. Carbon Fiber has great properties that improve the quality of products. Unfortunately right now, it is an industry that produces a lot of waste. The technology and innovations at CFR can fundamentally turn that situation around to benefit carbon fiber consumers, and the planet.