There are some basic issues with balancing recycling however, the way other games get around this issue is to have the recycled material be a new item.

For instance, when you recycle a T1 indy tuner, you get a unit of 'Scrap'.

The scrap is then used to reduce the material costs of production, or combined with other raw materials to get slightly more commodities (that's an OR situation, scape shouldn't be used in both ways).

Devs could go all crazy and try to determine a complex scrap recovery scheme, or simply:

T1 = 1 scrap
T2 = 2 scrap
T3 = 4 scrap
T4 = 8 scrap

And balance the 'effect' of scrap at the production end;

1 scrap = 1% eff
or
1 scrap = 1 more commoditity unit

and adjust the units or % to make recycling worth while but not fantastic.

This also has the effect of continuing to make gathering a requirement, since recycling doesn't give you any usefull material, it only 'boosts' the effect of existing mats.

Recycling skill would then apply to the 'boost' amount, and not the how much scrap you get from items.

The skill points would have to be returned again for recycle, but combat guys wouldn't have to worry about spending points on it, as it would fall under production, as it should.

Arga, please play the game again.  I will build you an awesome wall.

my main point here is:
if you do pve you get a lot of t1 loot. way more then you need for production. recycle it all and you get a bunch of comodities. mainly standart but also quite a few faction.
the problem is that the ballance is off. you get a lot from some stuff but less from others. so we are sitting on thousands of Us of commodities that we do not need in this form. and the ballance is getting more off with every week passing.

but there are materials in these commodities that we could use for other commodities that we still need. so most logical thought is to extract these resources and use them for the stuff that we do need.
and the most easy way to do and fix this without any major changes is to allow recycling of commodities.

alternativly you could change the refining system as well. but that would be a bit more complacated.
basicly that you can use your commodities as resources as well.
but then you will need a way more complicated screen because you have multible input and multible output materials. resources that will not fit into the end products will be lost in the process.

would also work.

@arga:
welll this might work in other games but i dont see that this will fit in the current system we have in perp.

We dont have this? O.o So +1 from me.

To the OP, I think Zortarg idea is acceptable dont have any problem with it.

This is already true as far as I know. Since the volume of commodities equals the sum of their components, and you can't ever reach perfect refining efficiency, the resulting commodity volumes will always be lower.

The wastage factor is almost too small a reduction worth mentioning, aside from the fact that the better the refine makes it even worse. Have you ever wondered why commodities have barely ever been traded? The refining of raw materials serves no purpose in transportation, therefore it will never be traded. Hence the OP issue.

Make a considerable reduction on commodities volume, so at least it's name 'commodity' actually means something.