Downcycling is the recycling of a material into a material of lesser quality. The obvious example is the recycling of plastics, which turns them into lower grade plastics. The terms downcycle and downcycling were first used by Reiner Pilz of Pilz GmbH and Thornton Kay of Salvo Llp in 1993, along with the terms upcycle and upcycling.

This term was popularized by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.