If you delete something in Windows OS, it will go to Recycle bin. But if you think about it nothing recycles in it right?
Say, you delete a virus infected file and again restore it from recycle bin it won't get recycled or disinfected! right?
So why name it "recycle"? I think Mac or Linux gets it right with Trash.
Before and during the development of Windows 95, Microsoft was being sued by Apple for allegedly having improperly copied the Mac OS GUI.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corp:
Apple lost all claims in the Microsoft suit except for the ruling that the trash can icon and folder icons from Hewlett-Packard's NewWave windows application were infringing.
Based on this, I conclude that Microsoft chose the "Recycle Bin" metaphor to avoid, as much as possible, the risk of being accused of infringing on Apple's "Trash".
Much of what Microsoft initiated with Windows 95, including the Start Menu, served primarily to differentiate it from Mac OS, which in the popular mindset was the only OS competing with Windows.
This coupled with the rise in attention to ecological needs in the 1990s made the term "Recycle Bin" an apt way to accomplish this differentiation, without serving any specific UX need.
If you take a tomato back out of a real-life recycle bin, it also doesn't get recycled. Nor does it get disinfected (unless you actively do that).
However, if you leave it in there and the bin gets emptied, both eventually get recycled. The tomato the traditional way, the file because its bits on your hard disk get made available again for storing other files.
So recycling is actually a close metaphor to the actual behaviour, more so than the "trash".
I am not sure when Windows introduced that word, but if it was since Windows 95, as Bart Gijssens's answer claims, then Microsoft is not the first one to come up with the idea of recycling. NeXT STEP operating system introduced at around 1988 had a recycling mark as the icon for its counterpart. Microsoft may have gotten the idea from there. Your question should be attributed to NeXT computer, not Microsoft.
(Image taken from http://www.fanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/nextstep-os.jpg)
In Windows, the recycle bin was introduced in Windows 95. (source used)
Of course, Microsoft took their idea from other OS'es that had it long before. On most OS'es, dragging a file to the trashcan meant: Delete the file.
This is where the word "recycle" comes in. Microsoft was looking for a way to make clear that moving items to the trash does not delete those items. They are "stored" in the trash for later deletion. It's only when the user empties trash that the items are deleted. Or you can restore the items to their original location. And that's what they mean with "recycling".
I can't speak for Microsoft, but I've always liked the recycling bin metaphor as it works on so many levels:
Recycling is more eco-friendly than garbage and the recycling bin metaphor is a form of corporate green-washing. By aligning themselves with a recycling bin instead of the more ubiquitous trashcan, Microsoft is implying something about their corporate culture and motivations.
Recycle bins, as a concept, are less likely to disgust than trash cans are. Imagining an overflowing trash and you're thinking of a wasteful community, perhaps even of rodents and disease. An overflowing recycling bin can inspire the idea of an clean, efficient, and futuristic community.
When you empty it, you aren't throwing away the hard drive space... you're making it available to be used again. This is a direct analog to recycling.
As discussed at the time:
Microsoft considered the word "trash", considered that the reason for having this was to allow people to take things back out of the "trash" before they were permanently discarded, considered that many people have a "yuck!" reaction to the idea of putting their hands into the trash bin (thinking of it as kitchen trash or otherwise unpleasant)...
... and decided that "recycle bin" avoided the yuck factor.
The files which are deleted are in fact recycled. The material from which they are made -- storage bits -- is regrouped and reused for other files, just like recycled plastic can be used to make something new, like a synthetic fiber sweater.
The metaphor is much older than Microsoft Windows.
"Garbage collection" was introduced in the late 1950's in the Lisp programming language.
But in fact garbage collection performs recycling (the term typically used is "storage reclamation"). Digital objects which have become "garbage" are turned into storage for new objects.
Memory and disk storage are a "serially reusable" resource: when a program no longer needs it, another one can use it.
Recycling of computer storage is in fact a more perfect form of recycling than, say, plastic or paper which are usually only "downcycling": recovering an inferior form of raw material compared to the original.
The recycle bin doesn't actually recycle anything, just like a real recycle bin where items sit until the real disposal takes place which initiates the recycling process. Just like a real recycling bin, the Windows one lets us change our minds: the same way we can take back a plastic bottle from our recycle bin, we can restore a deleted file. This restore action is not understood as recycling: in computing it is called "recovery" and in physical disposal it is usually called "reuse", rather than "recycling". (Though, by metonymy, sometimes the reuse of materials is referred to recycling; something made of re-used objects which were never actually thrown away is sometimes said to be "made of recycled goods". However, these goods are not reused for their original purpose. If we use a plastic beverage bottle for carrying drinking water, that is not called recycling.)
When we "empty the recycle bin", that is analogous to someone taking away our recycled material to a recycling center. At that point, the opportunity to recover a file is lost, just like the opportunity to reuse a plastic bottle.
Deleting a file without going to the recycle bin (for instance, using Shift-Delete in Windows Exporer to delete permanently) is analogous to taking an item directly to the recycling depot, bypassing the local recycle bin. Once an item is handed over to the depot, it cannot be recovered.
The recycling analogy holds very well because computer storage is a real, physical resource; the recycling is just as real as that of plastic. Storage bits are real three-dimensional objects. These bits have a location in space, mass, volume and so on. Why we have to recycle them is that there are only so many available in a device, which has to do with physical constraints. There being only 32Gb on a flash chip is no different from, say, there only being so many liters of water on a planet.
So, Microsoft has considerable technical justification in calling that system feature "Recycle Bin". Yet, it has been called "Trash" or similar in other systems. Perhaps, part of the motivation is simply to be different and to tip a hat, so to speak, to the recycling movement. The recycle bin says "I am of this age; I think about the environment, and encourage people who look at me to do the same".
The most likely reason is probably since when you're deleting a file, you're not recycling the file, you're recycling the hard drive space and making it available for use.
Also, the use of the term "recycle bin" is more environmentally friendly than a trash can, and might imply something about goals Microsoft may or may not make to help the environment be less contaminated with waste.
I've got no actual references for this but it fits closer with Microsoft Office paradigm. In the workplace (possibly still Microsoft's largest user base), users were mainly using their computers for word processing and spreadsheets. Paper is a recyclable material and hence you should be putting paper in a recycling bin rather than general waste.
It is called a 'Recycling Bin' because the files in it can be taken out at any moment, unless you bypass the recycling bin and delete it straight away by holding the SHIFT key while performing an action that would normally send a file to the trash. The fact that you can restore and 'recycle' your work back onto your computers hard drive.
