“…To demonstrate this, they took 80 grams of a scrap mountain-bike frame made of composite material and deconstructed it. Using the carbon fibers they had just extracted, they then made new composites that exhibited more than twice the strength-to-weight ratio of steel.”

I’m confused as to how this demonstrates the strands being unaffected? The lay up, epoxy, temp, time, etc. could be different between first and second use.

They might be trying to say it has ‘some’ reuse in the future, with equivalent strength being an unknown.