It is actually quite rare for a "recycled" material to be reused as the exact same thing. More often, materials are "down-cycled". In other words, they are used for something that is not quite the same and requires a lesser degree of refinement.

This isn't entirely true, and in some ways its misleading and pedantic rather than informative.

Yes, overall recycling produces far too much "down-cycling", but many key materials are easily re-purified and almost always reused for similar or even higher grade products. Down-cycling creates concern when it means a material has a limited life and then ends up discarded; it doesn't matter if some subsequent products made from a batch of material have lower purity or complexity out of sheer coincidence, so long as the material remains viable for most any usage in subsequent rounds of reclamation.

Aluminum, glass, steel, and copper make up massive percentages of materials used by humans. In western countries these all get reclaimed at very high percentages, and almost never get "down-cycled" out of chemical necessity (if at all). Sure, it's possible to recycle a 747 into Coke cans if that's where the smelter sells the aluminum afterwards, but it just as easily could and might end up as another aircraft. Whether that happens immediately or after 10 rounds as a Coke can is meaningless and doesn't mean the aluminum was ever "down-cycled".

I know petroleum, rubber, and paper products create particular concern about actual down-cycling, and often end up as pure landfill by their third or fourth use, but don't overstate the gravity of the phenomenon. We're very good at recycling these days, and other than petroleum plastics I can't think of any critical material which isn't renewable, infinitely recyclable, or both.