Is recycling a form of transmutation?

The substance doesn't change. a recycled aluminium can may no longer be a can but it's still aluminium.

Makes sense.

You are building a fictional universe. Can't you declare recycling to be a form of transmutation? You could have him turn coffee grounds into lead bullets if you want to.

Izzy explained what the difference between recycling and transmutation is. Thank you.

But you can't use that - get your own ideas!

They're kinfolk.

Since recycling of nuclear waste is a form of transmutation, you could have one heck of a powerful creature development for your character (or group of characters).

You're missing the point. I have spoken, there are no more ideas.

So don't start getting any.

Everything is transmutable into something else given enough energy. Although 'energetic transmutation' has a cool-sounding ring to it, remember that creation involves destruction so ethical transmutation involves giving consideration to all the various effects of the process(es) and what alternative might be less harmful.

If you are a Marvel fan, considering the following quote from Thanos:

That is some mighty energetic transmutation Thanos is talking about, but it is beyond the ethic of harm-minimization.

Harm-reduction is the reason recycling is better than making things from scratch starting with the harvesting/mining of raw materials. Re-use, however, is less harmful than recycling because less energy is used to transmute the waste object/material. Re-purposing something might not involve changing anything about the object/material except how and/or where it is used.

Transmutation refers to changing something in some way, but it is subjective how small a change you can consider no-change-at-all. E.g. does the phase change of liquid water to ice seem more like transmutation than the transmutation of water to saline solution by dissolving salt in the water? Both changes are significant, but the phase change is more striking subjectively while dissolving salt in liquid water just seems like adding flavor from a subjective POV.

From another POV, of course, transmuting water into saline changes its conductivity and other chemical properties more so than freezing it. Ice is, after all, the same as liquid water in terms of its chemical make-up. The molecules just slowed down until they could no longer get by each other.

The only reference I have on that subject:
https://etherealmatters.org/transmutation