ABSTRACT
In most of the world it is common practice to recycle or reuse newspapers, glass bottles, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, automobile parts, clothes, and sometimes even entire houses. In broad terms, successful composite recycling requires incentives, infrastructure, recycling techniques, and market commitment. With post-consumer waste the issue of how aging influences recyclability is an unresolved issue. All semi-commercial pilot programs for composite recycling have used industrial scrap and there are so far no initiatives to recycle post-consumer composite waste on a commercial scale. Although it may be conceptually less straightforward to recycle thermoset composites than their thermoplastic brethren, the common misconception that thermoset composites due to the presence of crosslinks cannot be recycled is a myth. Paints and adhesives should be avoided since they are pollutants from a recycling point of view and cannot easily be removed. Although undesirable from a recycling point of view, metal fasteners often cannot be avoided.
