Could be, who knows! Regional differences in English make it complicated.

I’ve always used these as separate verbs. “Throw away” to me means to put it into the garbage, “recycle” means to put it in the recycling bin. Like, “Oh, don’t bother recycling that, just throw it away” or, conversely, “Don’t throw that away, it should get recycled.”

But at the same time, if someone were to hand me a rinsed-out milk carton and say, “throw this away” I would probably ask them where their recycling bin is. All down to interpretation and situation, I suppose.

Language is fun!