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Albuquerque residents, all 450,000 or so of us, recycle a little more than 13,000 tons of milk jugs, cans and papers in one year.

Add yard waste and Christmas trees, and the tonnage diverted from the landfill jumps to between 40,000 and 50,000 tons.

Meanwhile, 550,000 tons are still buried in the landfill.

In other words, just under 10 percent of the stuff people throw away is recycled.

That's not bad, but efforts are afoot to boost the numbers further. City officials believe our recycling potential is largely untapped.

Take the case of another major Western city, this one with about 100,000 more people: Portland, Oregon.

Residents there recycle 552,000 tons ever year out of a total waste stream of just over 1 million tons, according to Bruce Walker, a program manager for Portland.

The amount of pure material is higher because the city is a regional hub, Walker said.

Overall, that means Portlanders recycle more than 50 percent of what they throw away.

"We'd still like to do better," Walker said.

If recycling is a habit to be learned, Portlanders have had more time to learn it. Their program started in the early 1980s, one of the first in the nation.

Since 1971, Oregonians have paid a 5 cent deposit on bottles and cans. To get that deposit back, they must recycle the bottles at special centers.

Portland also provides bright yellow 16-gallon tubs for residents to fill up with recyclables. Albuquerque residents must bag their own.

Changing that would cost a pretty penny: $54 per container, according to Leonard Garcia, the head of the Albuquerque Solid Waste Department.

The city has looked into issuing yard waste bins but "it involves a substantial rate increase," according to Mayor Martin Chavez.

Back in Portland, the tubs seem to act as a kind of peer-pressure inducing advertisement for recycling, Walker said.

"That says, `I'm putting mine out, you should too,' " he said. "We believe that makes a big difference."

Like a vast field of cows, Albuquerque's landfills generate astonishing amounts of methane gas. Earlier this month, two city councilors called for that gas to be converted into energy.

Currently, city workers harvest the gas by sinking strategically placed pipes full of holes into the landfill. Most of the gas is then "flared" - burned while it exits a smokestack.

"Which seems like a fairly substantial waste of a resource," said Councilor Martin Heinrich, who, along with fellow Councilor Isaac Benton, wants to see the city put the gas to a different use.

Ideas include bottling it for use as fuel in city vehicles or constructing a small power plant that would sell the juice back to PNM.