Recycling is defined as extracting the materials that make a product to make a new product using those materials.
Typically a piece of waste can be seen as two things: the material it’s made from and the shape it is in. For example a chip bag is made from plastic and is in the form of a bag. If one were to upcycle a chip bag one would be leveraging both aspects and not destroying any part of it. While if one were to melt a chip bag into a plastic product it would be considered recycling.