I don't really understand alpha&omega's comment... but sticking with my interpretation: I think it's safe to say that nothing should ever be "large-scaled", only up- or down-scaled, i.e. where the adjective itself suggests a change in scale.

1b: doesn't suggest to me that recycling is completely new, just that now it's likely to take place on a large scale, whether or not it happened before.

1a: if you actually need to say that the scale has increased, I'd rather rephrase it to "...a move to recycling on a larger scale." I think "large-scaled" is plain wrong and I think "upscaled" sounds weird in this instance.

But I can't say that any of this is a hard and fast rule.

The difference, I think, is that "scaled" should be used only to indicate a change in scale. So you could speak about an "upscaled" project, if it's been enlarged from original conception, but only ever a "large-scale" project.

Hope that helps.