It feels good to at least do a little, rather than feel defeated.
That's what I try to remind myself of, when I know that when I recycle it's just a droplet of the waste out there. I'm not even sure how many people recycle in my country and even though there are adds and promo's, it's not part of the culture the majority of the population yet.
Also, there's no incentive like what you've mentioned, but also not sure if that would make a difference here.
Here it varies a lot depending on what state or city you're in. When I was a kid in New Jersey, it was mandatory to recycle at home and separate it out, so we had to stack newspapers and tie them together with twine, and put bottles and cans in a bin, apart from the other trash. Then I moved to Colorado where it wasn't mandatory and so some people would do it (which required dropping it off yourself), but most didn't. Nowadays it's more normal here, but there are still huge loopholes - it became mandatory for houses years ago in my city but only with this past election we had a week or so ago did it finally pass to be mandatory for apartments and businesses!