In Recycling, the base material is broken down and transformed into a different product, which is also quite resource intensive. This also results in deterioration of quality of the material. So eventually the material will have to dumped after some rounds of recycling. In Upcycling, the material does not undergo any breakdown and it gets repurposed into a new product using innovative design. So looking at the Upcycled product, one can make out the  base material that is used. The other phrase that can used for upcycling is “Extending material lifetime”. There is no loss of quality and the same material can keep getting repurposed using creativity. This is also not a resource intensive process.