Why do people do this?

Ok, I don't know if I blogged about this before. I know I thought about it around Earth Day, but now I'm seeing this again (at the Metro station I get off at, to go to work). If anything, Global Weirding (instead of Global Warming, not my term, it's Thomas L. Friedman's. I love it.) is getting worse, so why would people continue to put trash in a trash can, when there's a recycling bin specifically for newspapers right next to it? Do old habits die that hard? Is this the picture we want to present of ourselves to people from other countries (No wonder America is seen the way it is for the most part by the rest of the world.)? That we're that stupid and lazy? I'll confess, my apartment complex does not have paper or plastic recycling. About the only recycling that I have seen, is yellow clothes donation boxes. I don't drive, so pretty much everything that I want to recycle, I have to lug to my job (which does recycle). It makes for a hellish Metro commute to be loaded down with bags though, especially when it's crowded. This being said, I do not always recycle, because it's just not practical for me. Other people are in this same boat as well, this is a problem I understand. When the recycling bins are right there though, I have a hard time getting my head around not recycling. I used to work in a recyling center back in college (They recycled pretty much everything, softer plastics, newspapers, white paper, color paper, magazines, glass...). About the only things we couldn't recycle were certain hard plastics (I'm pretty sure that's probably changed by now.). If the resources are there, why don't people do it? Is it a question of money, time, space, what? I just don't get it.