The invention discloses a recycling method for a lithium cobaltate positive electrode material of a lithium ion battery. The recycling method comprises the following steps of: discharging a waste lithium cobaltate battery to obtain a positive electrode material of the battery; soaking and treating the positive electrode material in N-methyl pyrrolidone to obtain precipitates, and sintering the precipitates to obtain LiCoO2 powder; enabling the powder to react with a natural organic acid solution to obtain leach liquor containing Li<+> and Co<2+>; adding thiourea into the leach liquor to perform hydrothermal reaction; and performing centrifugal separation on products of the hydrothermal reaction and washing the precipitates, drying the products to obtain CoS crystals, collecting and filtering liquid supernatant to obtain filtrate, and adding saturated Na2CO3 into filtrate to react, thereby obtaining a Li2CO3 material. The recycling method disclosed by the invention can adopt relatively less chemical preparations, is simple in operation step, is high in recovery rate of lithium cobaltate, can realize electrochemical property cyclic regeneration of the waste battery positive electrode material, is obvious in effect, and is simple and easy to implement.