Soon recycling may be added to the endangered species list.

A recent New Yorker editorial cartoon captured the situation about as concisely as could be done: an overflowing trash can, capped-off by a now-anachronistic recycling container.

The Wall Street Journal, among others, has reported the demise of what many fear may soon be seen as the somewhat yuppy-ish 70s green fad of a bygone generation, reporting that even in states with container laws the percentages and volume of recycled aluminum and paper are falling way-off.

“Is Recycling Being Canned?” The Washington Post headlined in a recent Sunday Business section feature. “Complacency and economics are combining to threaten continued progress in reusing what we would otherwise throw away,” reporter Martha McNeil Hamilton wrote. “For the first time in many years, the number of aluminum cans tossed into the trash last year exceeded the number separated and carted off for recycling.” Paper and plastic are bringing up the rear, at about 10 and 20 percent respectively.

“Now that recycling is mainstream – no longer a hip, politically correct ethos – its momentum is faltering,” she wrote, and more and more cities are turning to thoughts of reducing recycling programs as a way of helping them balance stressed budgets.

It’s of course not just the mainstream news media that are reporting the fall-off in recycling among Americans. The cover of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Fall 2002 onearth, formerly Amicus Journal, asks “Is Recycling on the Skids?”

“Three decades ago, Americans threw themselves into the recycling revolution like couch potatoes becoming fitness fanatics. Today, we’ve hit a plateau,” the magazine reports. It quotes the head of America Recycles Day as saying, “I hate to use the term, but recycling is clearly not as sexy as it was.”

The NRDC magazine article, written by Gretel H. Schueller, nonetheless concludes that public interest in recycling “remains strong; after all, more people in this country recycle than vote.” Schueller reports that the U.S. could learn a thing or two about recycling from more successful European experiences. Those are driven in large part by legislative requirements, some of them specifically addressing recycling and reuse of short-lived electronics equipment like computers, printers, monitors, and scanners, an area of potential recycling “growth” both overseas and perhaps also in the U.S. in coming years.