Four years went by, and the paper piled up waist-deep on the balcony, which led to a new problem — grandfather would wait until they left home and then throw the paper in the trash surreptitiously. “He was always trying to get rid of all the garbage from our balcony,” Mr. Protasov said, grinning. “He thought we were quite crazy guys.”

Surprising though it may be, the Protasovs, who eventually took a car-full of old paper to a private company an hour’s drive away and sold it for virtually nothing, are not alone.

In Russia, where most household trash goes straight to landfills, a small but growing cadre of people not only want to recycle, but are willing to go to great lengths to do so. They entertain modest dreams that they will someday inspire the government to institute wide-ranging regulations for garbage separation.

“Awareness is kind of rising,” said Alexander Tsygankov, a project coordinator at Greenpeace Russia, whose girlfriend initially objected to the idea of collecting old milk cartons, cans and plastic bottles in their one-room apartment. “We’ve definitely seen a change in the last two or three years.”

There is little doubt Moscow could use a robust recycling effort. The majority of the city’s landfills date to the Soviet period and fail to meet modern environmental standards. Furthermore, Greenpeace Russia has estimated that all of Moscow’s landfills will be full within the next two to four years.