Recycle means to take something that's been used and process it so the materials can be used again to make new things. When you recycle a plastic bottle, it gets melted down and reformed into new plastic products instead of sitting in a landfill for hundreds of years. Paper gets pulped and remade into fresh paper. Aluminum cans get melted and shaped into new cans, saving the energy it would take to mine and refine new aluminum from scratch.

Instead of the one-way path of make, use, throw away, recycling creates a loop: make, use, process, make again.

Most communities have recycling programs where you separate certain materials like paper, plastic, glass, and metal into special bins. The recycling facility then sorts and processes these materials for manufacturers to use as raw materials. Not everything can be recycled easily, which is why the bins often have specific rules about what goes in them.

People also use recycle more loosely to mean reusing anything in a new way. A teacher might recycle jokes from previous years. A songwriter might recycle a melody from an old composition. In these cases, it means taking something that already exists and giving it another purpose.