Transforming vs. Recycling

Hey guys, this should be a pretty quick question. I'm at like 400/200 storage, and the vast majority of it is white/green crap. Theoretically I could transform it, but that takes a lot of people/research points, which seem more valuable than getting a blue whatever.

On the other hand, recycling doesn't seem to do very much for me at all at this tier. But I still need to scrap half my stuff to be able to use new good things.

I've collection booked everything rubbish that I can, so how do I chop my storage down to size? Thanks in advance.