The extensive application of carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) has led to a sharp rise in the waste generated from CFRP, which poses a significant issue in sustainability that needs to be addressed. This work presents an efficient treatment method to recycle CFRP waste. Under the combined action of microwave heating and ZnCl2/NaCl molten salt, the epoxy resin matrix was rapidly degraded at 300 ℃ in 20 min. Then the pyrolytic carbon produced on the surface of carbon fibers from this process was removed by oxidation procedure in an air atmosphere. The results showed that the surface morphology and microstructure of the recycled carbon fibers (RCF) had no obvious changes, and the tensile strength and tensile modulus of RCF remained at 87.8 % and 94.6 % of the virgin carbon fibers, respectively. The degradation of epoxy resin by microwave molten salt pyrolysis increased the output of H2, which reached 65.35 % of total pyrolysis gases. Furthermore, the epoxy resin can be transformed directionally. The main components of the pyrolysis oils were phenol and p-isopropyl phenol, which had a high utilization value. Therefore, this study designed a new and efficient process to recycle carbon fibers from CFRP waste, which has important application prospect.