SEATTLE -- Cathy Nolan has a difficult job: Teaching her neighbors the often-puzzling rituals of curbside recycling.

"The toughest part is having the courage to knock on the doors of people you don't know and talk to them about changing their behavior without seeming nosy," she says.

She tells them that cereal boxes, minus plastic liners, can be recycled, but microwave food containers, though also paper, can't. She explains why the city won't pick up plastic yogurt containers and milk jugs deposited at the curb; they are made of the wrong kind of plastic. She gives tips: How she composts cardboard meat trays in her backyard bin and recycles plastic bottles at dropoff centers. Instead of finger-pointing, she talks about her own recycling mistakes: How she used to mix rubber-lined tops and lids with metal cans.

"I haven't had anybody slam the door in my face," Ms. Nolan says. "Recycling has drawn us closer as a neighborhood."

In the war against waste, Cathy Nolan is a recycling block captain, a foot soldier in a small army of eager volunteers who have helped Seattle achieve the highest recycling rate of any major U.S. city. Seattle already recycles 37% of its waste and is ahead of schedule in its campaign to reach 60% by 1998.

The volunteers, by teaching, cajoling and trying to set strong examples, seek to reduce the trash going to landfills, which often cause pollution. Their tactics are critical to the success of a drive that doesn't compel participation.

They are helped by peer pressure, especially among retirees unaccustomed to recycling. After talking to neighbors, Dorothy Wiggins, a 69-year-old widow, reduced her garbage by more than half. "They figure it's helpful, so I go along with it. But I'm also saving money" through lower trash-collection bills, she says.

Ms. Nolan, armed with a two-inch-thick recycling manual issued by the city, casually checks up on 25 households on her block. So far, all but one have signed up for recycling.

Her low-key suasion recently worked with one holdout. Jim Green, 43, says he became a refusenik when the city's contractor wouldn't pick up his garbage in the old metal cans. Despite his numerous phone calls, he says, the contractor failed to deliver special plastic containers required under the city's new pay-by-the-can system.

"I threatened to dump trash in the middle of the street," Mr. Green says. New containers suddenly appeared. Fearing another "bureaucratic shuffle," he threw out forms for ordering recycling bins. Although he wouldn't call the city, he was receptive when Ms. Nolan stopped by to chat. "She's someone we know, and she made it easy," he says.

Although the program isn't yet saving the city money, Seattle offers the first large-scale, practical demonstration that recycling can be a cost-effective alternative to incinerating or landfilling most waste. By providing a model and an answer to skeptics, Seattle's experience is expected to lend force to proposals to double federal, state and local recycling goals to the 40% to 60% range. Those targets, in turn, are likely to reduce the size and number of new incinerators.

"What Seattle is doing could be replicated in almost any major city," contends Bruce Weddle, the Environmental Protection Agency's solid-waste director. But the nation now recycles only about 17% of its waste, and many communities are struggling to meet the federal goal of 25% by 1993.

One key to Seattle's success is garbage rates that, in effect, pay people to recycle. Residents pay a separate bill based on how much garbage they produce. Monthly charges increase steeply from $10.70 for a 19-gallon "mini-can" to $31.75 for three full-size, 32-gallon cans. Recycling of plastic soda bottles, glass, cans, newspaper and mixed waste paper, including junk mail, is free. The result: Almost nine out of 10 households have reduced their garbage to one can or less per week, cutting tonnage going to landfills by nearly 30% since 1987. Four out of five Seattle households now recycle.

Innovative programs have helped. The city requires residents to separate yard clippings from other trash but charges only $2 a month for collection. It is distributing 10,000 free bins to encourage backyard composting and offers opportunities to recycle some plastic bottles, mattresses, motor oil and even lawnmowers. Old latex paint is collected, and light colors are blended and sold for $5 a gallon as "Seattle beige." In all, the city spends $7 million a year for recycling, including collection and $500,000 for advertising.

But Seattle's success "may not be entirely transferable to other parts of the country," warns Allen Moore, president of the National Solid Wastes Management Association, an industry trade group. Surrounded by the natural beauty of Puget Sound, old-growth forests and snow-clad Mount Rainier, Seattle residents are imbued with environmental fervor. The city was already recycling 24% of its waste before curbside service began in 1988. Moreover, Seattle's ready access to the huge Asian market has made recycling more economic.

To reach its own ambitious goal, Seattle must persuade residents to separate 85% of what is recyclable. Instructions stuffed into utility bills aren't enough to prompt the necessary life-style changes; so neighborhood volunteers teach by example.

The family of one volunteer, Toni Reineke, loves chocolate syrup, but she won't buy it in nonrecyclable squeeze bottles. Instead, she makes her own from ingredients packaged in paper and glass. "It's cheaper and tastes better," she adds. The Reinekes still send out for pizza, but Mrs. Reineke's husband, Robert, rips the cardboard box in two, saves the clean part for recycling and burns the rest in the fireplace. Their eight-year-old daughter, Robin, won't buy toys in excessive packaging. "It's not kind to Mother Earth," she says.

Norma Davidson, a 65-year-old volunteer, practices a waste-reducing life style that she calls "living lightly." She brushes her teeth with baking soda to avoid disposable toothpaste tubes, reuses tinfoil and sandwich bags and heats her home with discarded lumber. Her 60-by-120-foot city lot is a laboratory of natural recycling. Food scraps and yard waste are composted into fertilizer for "edible landscaping," such as the brilliant yellow calendula flowers that go in her salads.

Obstacles remain, however. The recycled latex paint hasn't sold well because beige isn't popular, and some contractors worry that it might not hold up well. Some miscreants think "yard waste" includes things like engine blocks and tires. Fewer than half the households in some poor neighborhoods recycle; the city is hiring a minority consultant to help reach blacks and Asians.

More significantly, Seattle's two recycling contractors are sustaining losses because newsprint and mixed-paper prices have collapsed. That could lead to higher garbage rates unless the paper industry adds enough recycled-paper -- using capacity to shore up the markets. Furthermore, businesses and apartment buildings aren't served by the city's program, and commercial garbage rates, set by the state, don't provide strong incentives to recycle. Only a third of Seattle's public schools recycle paper because costs are high, although officials plan to extend recycling to more schools.

Nonetheless, employees accustomed to recycling at home are demanding to do it at work. Allen Daniel, who manages the Pioneer Building, got many requests from his business tenants, but he didn't have the time or know-how to organize a program for 85 offices. "Recycling isn't my priority," Mr. Daniel says.

He turned to Carol Olsen, a consultant hired by the city. She contacted more than 50 tenants, distributed fliers and found a contractor willing to pick up mixed waste paper free of charge. The contractor, the nonprofit Seattle Drug and Narcotic Program, teaches recovering addicts new work skills by recycling paper for 400 businesses.

With nearly all tenants recycling paper, aluminum cans and bottles, the Pioneer Building has cut trash by a third and saved $300 a month. But there have been tradeoffs. Now, garbage is picked up from offices every other day, prompting minor complaints about odors.

Of 50 businesses assisted through the city's pilot program, however, 30 didn't start recycling, mostly because they were too small to get pickup service or couldn't organize their buildings.

However, the city must make "significant strides" in commercial and apartment recycling to achieve its interim goal of recycling 50% of all waste by 1993, says Diana Gale, director of Seattle's Solid Waste Utility. Using government funds, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce is hiring two full-time employees to promote recycling and use of products such as 100%-recycled office paper. One reason: "Business people aren't comfortable with the city coming in to tell them what to do," says Susan Fife, who heads the chamber's recycling committee.

Bureaucracy has also been a problem. Ruth Hardy, who manages two adjacent four-unit apartment buildings, is begging to recycle. Her dumpster is overflowing. But for three months, the city declined to deliver bins, contending her operation actually is eight units; only buildings of up to four units are eligible. Eventually, the city relented, and it promised to deliver the bins.

Although recycling has become a way of life in most Seattle neighborhoods, David Chamberlain, another block captain, says he did have a problem -- his two teenagers. It took a year to hit upon a system requiring only minimal cooperation: recycling containers strategically located throughout his house.

Tearing himself away from Nintendo, Andrew, 14, points to the large box in his bedroom with a sign admonishing: "Recycle Paper." Says he: "When my room fills up with junk, that's where I throw my magazines, school papers and pop cans."

His brother, John, 19, is a strapping softball player who consumes cases of soda pop, boxes of pizza and gallons of milk from his bedroom refrigerator. "He's getting better" at recycling, his mother says, although he forgets to remove the plastic liner from his four-pound Grape Nuts boxes. His recycling container is overflowing, but he admits he is usually too lazy to carry it downstairs. "I just don't see getting all hyped up about it," he says.

His parents are perfectionists: They separate everything. Plastic milk, detergent and shampoo bottles go to a dropoff at the local supermarket. Glass, separated by color to increase its value, helps support local charities. Andrew hoards aluminum, including printing plates from his father's business, and sells them privately to help support his video mania.

Mr. Chamberlain also deals with midnight dumpers cruising back alleys. Determined to avoid the $5 charge for every bag of garbage that won't fit in prepaid cans, they have stashed trash and heaps of cigarette butts in his recycling bin. Now, Mr. Chamberlain rolls out the container only on pickup day.

Ms. Nolan, the North Seattle block captain, computer analyst and mother of three-year-old Tyler, avoids packaging wherever possible. She stuffs a canvas bag with grocery sacks, produce bags and plastic containers before driving to a Puget Consumers' Co-Op, which sells everything from honey and spices to peanut butter and shampoo in bulk. Using gravity-fed bins and barrels fitted with pumps and spigots, she fills her reusable packaging. Milk comes in returnable glass bottles.

But what to do with all the corn cobs, husks, chicken bones and other remains from summer barbecues? Ms. Nolan relies on a 4-foot-by-2-foot plywood box in her back yard that looks vaguely like a coffin. It is her worm composting bin, home to a one-pound, writhing ball of red manure worms that digest almost any organic matter, even paper plates. Opening the lid, her husband digs into the waste, which is steaming hot from decomposition. On the left side, he buries barbecue waste, moldy pita bread, orange peels and coffee grounds. On the right, he scoops out a soil-like material that fertilizes the garden.

His wife doesn't consider herself an environmental nut. "What motivates me more is saving money," she says. Growing up in an Irish-American family of 12, she says she learned the "value of reusing."

The environmental use of worms is catching on among the neighborhood's young families. Debra Revere, 36, a family therapist, got her first worm box recently at a birthday party. Neighbors pitched in to build her a deluxe model, designed as a garden bench and painted in beige and red to match her house.

But some choices aren't easy. Ms. Nolan and her husband disagree on how to stain the exterior trim of their bungalow. He says solvent-based stain will last longer, but she prefers a less-polluting latex. Convenience, too, is a factor: They use an electric dishwasher. Says Ms. Nolan: "I have a debate going on in my head at all times: What's the lesser evil?"

--- Waste Not, Want Not

Percentage of solid-waste recycled

Seattle ........... 37% Portland, Ore. .... 28% Minneapolis ....... 23% Los Angeles ....... 15% Baltimore ......... 12% New York .......... 10% Cincinnati ........ 9% Boston ............ 7% Houston ........... 4%

Source: Institute for Local Self-Reliance, cities' Own Estimates, EPA.