Volunteering for the environment?

I’ve been giving this some thought, and I believe the idea that Americans are willing to volunteer but don’t follow through can be applied to the Green movement.  I believe that recycling, composting, and being energy efficient are like volunteering for mother earth.

It’s amazing to me that so relatively few people recycle.  It’s not easy (not in Manhattan at least: loading your car full of trash and sorting it in a large warehouse), but the rewards and feeling of happiness that you’re doing one less thing to kill the earth is great.

What lead me to this analogy is that I was thinking of a person I know who is the Green Team leader at their school, yet at home she does not recycle.  She pays for the recycling people to come, and has a green bin at the foot of her driveway, but simply does not want to be bothered to put things in different containers  rather than one trash can.  How can this be?

Just as volunteers need to make that conceptual leap, so too must want-to-be environmentalists make the leap into actually changing their daily habits.  Any suggestions on how to encourage that leap?