downcycle

To convert (waste materials, etc.) into new materials or products of lower quality and reduced functionality.

Nike set up a "Reuse-a-Shoe" program to "downcycle" old sneakers. The outsole rubber and midsole foam from used shoes are converted into surface material for running tracks and other athletic facilities and playgrounds. The fabric from the shoe uppers becomes padding under carpets.

A period of a cycle where something is decreasing or deteriorating.

Because commodity industries, including energy, are driven by costs, a pricing down-cycle brings major cost cutting efforts, often involving restructurings and consolidations to increase economies of scale.

It is precisely these logical anomalies, paradoxes and problems, which create Samsara's wheel of eternal repeating up-cycles which is followed by eternal repeating down-cycles and vice versa (for example life and death, success and fiasco, joy and sorrow) – as well as the ignorance and suffering when you are caught into this wheel, for example in the experience of nightmare and anxiety.