With marginal set-up costs and time, separating should be done when you through things away. Honestly, it takes almost no time whatsoever. Have a paper bin and a plastics/glass/metal bin (that's as separated as we need to be in NJ). Put recyclables into said bins as appropriate. If your time is worth that much, the $10 in the costs of the bins would be recovered pretty quickly.

Second point: This argument would only hold water if that time was going to be spent doing something else. My thought is that we waste enough time scratching our butts everyday that were we to separate and recycle, we could call that time productive rather than wasted.

YMMV.

"My thought is that we waste enough time scratching our butts everyday that were we to separate and recycle, we could call that time productive rather than wasted."

Do we? I wish I had time to sit around scratching my butt. Keeping up a house is hard work when you have to spend forty hours a week in an office. I don't even have time left over to sort my mail, let alone my recyclables. The only time I get to scratch my butt is when I'm on the job getting paid to do so, because I finished a project ahead of schedule (which tends to freak out my bosses more than falling behind schedule, for some reason).

Tat - I'll be honest, I'm not sure what you're doing that's taking so much time. When I lived alone, I had plenty of time. Right now, Amber and I have 7 cats (3 of which get regular meds), 2 snakes, 2 fishtanks - and all of this is in 2 bedroom apartment with a loft. We also make it to the gym to lift/swim/run 4 or more times a week and we've got plenty of time to separate recyclables and waste it in front of the TV.

Not saying that your being inefficient or anything, just not sure what could be taking that much time.

I'm probably being extremely inefficient, but I dunno how I could get any more efficient.
My usual schedule generally runs:
7:00 AM: Wake up
7:00 - 7:30 AM: Eat breakfast, make lunch
7:30 - 8:00 AM: Take shower, shave, get dressed
8:00 AM: Go to work
6:00 PM: Get home from work
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM: Work on current home repair project (install vapor barrier in crawlspace)
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM: Do whatever cleaning, laundry, dishwashing, etc. needs doing
9:00 PM: Go to sleep.

Maybe when I'm done with all my home repair projects I'll have time to mess around with sorting recyclables, but that's at least another year or two away.

Okay, I can understand home repair projects being a bitch. That's certainly something we're familiar with (installed laminate flooring in one room, tiled the kitchen floor, installed wainscoting in the kitchen, swapped out a few light fixtures, installed a ceiling fan, rebuilt an entire bathroom with a custom tile shower, tiled the floor, etc.). Those certainly eat up lots of time.

Maybe going with the bin concept would work. That way you just sort as you would in front of the trashcan. You could even pick up one of those uber-shredders and put it next to the bin for mail.

One other thought is to do the projects on the weekend. That way you don't lose as much time to start-up every day.

Saturdays I train at the shooting range. It's a two-hour drive there and back, so I do as much shooting as I can pack in, but if my lawn needs mowing and it's not raining, I'll do that instead.

Sundays I try to take care of all the other stuff that need to be done, but I spend lunch and sometimes dinner with family members so my social skills don't degenerate to "JeffK" levels. Home repair still maintains a fairly high spot on the "needs to be done" list, though. I still haven't even started replacing all the lead paint in the house, and the fact that it's peeling off the walls due to the moisture is the only reason I'm working on the crawl space vapor barrier first.

JeffK? Some day I'll have to research that.

Yeah - home repairs can suck and take up inordinate amounts of time. Sometimes incredibly inordinate amounts of time.

I'll bet it would take 10 earths or more if everyone on the planet felt and lived as you do. That's one huge carbon footprint you have there, and though you may save your precious time by not bothering to recycle, your children and grandchildren would most likey be the ones to pay the price.

Recycling may not be a favorite pasttime, but it's the responsible thing to do, unless, as it's been pointed out, the cost of recycling in collection and distribution, would be more then the act of recycling itself.

If that's the case, buying something that has been made out of recycled materials could be a way to help.

Maybe you can choose to be a responsible citizen that way, if you don't want to "waste" 10 minutes a day recycling the trash you created in the first place.