Your argument only holds if the "effort" of recycling displaces effort/attention better directed toward other things. Some people might think that recycling absolves them from other environmentally irresponsible behavior, but I don't think that the effort to increase recycling is really an optimization problem since it doesn't really introduce meaningful costs into most everyday lives.
And the parent comments argument only holds if the effort of recycling at home is less than the benefit gained from doing it.
This is why unbiased figures are important. It's all relative. Why should everybody in my country have multiple bins picked up at different dates and have to separate garbage manually only to have a second group of people sort through it, if the overall effect is so tiny?
