So how do you change the level of individual committment for most folks?
Most places I have been have penalties associated with failure to recycle. These penalties are assessed by the local government. People recycle in order to avoid a fine. The fines make recycling the economically logical choice.
There is no way the economics of recycling justify the number of man hours and the consumption of resources required to make it work. Even the best programs barely cover the direct costs of collection and processing. But what is absent from these costs is the subsidy from the free labor and resources that were extracted from the individual householder through force of law. Add up all that, and recycling is a loser for everybody.