It still costs more to recycle paper, plastic, metal and glass in New York City than to simply chuck everything into the trash. But the cost difference has narrowed, and if the trend continues, recycling could end up being cheaper than trash disposal within five years, according to an analysis released on Wednesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

Recycling costs the city $284 a ton, while curbside trash disposal comes to $267 a ton, according to the analysis, which was prepared for the environmental group by DSM Environmental, an independent consulting firm in Vermont. The $17 per ton difference comes to about 6 percent, and is significantly less than it was a few years ago. When the city’s Independent Budget Office looked at recycling costs in 2004, it found that the city spent $34 to $48 a ton more to recycle than to send garbage to landfills.

“Here is proof positive that recycling is cost-competitive with other waste disposal methods, to say nothing of cutting the city’s contribution to global warming,” said Eric A. Goldstein, a senior lawyer at the environmental group. According to the report, New York’s recycling programs provide the same environmental benefit as taking roughly 338,000 cars off the road each year.

Officials at the Department of Sanitation have long argued that recycling does not necessarily pay for itself. During a fiscal crisis in 2002, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg cut back the recycling program to save money.

A year later, the administration reluctantly reversed itself and resumed a weekly recycling schedule. Before the disruption, recycling rates reached a high of 20 percent of the waste stream, but fell sharply afterward. They have recovered somewhat but remain lower, about 18 percent. Department officials said that could reflect a change to lighter packaging materials.

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The study found that recycling costs more in large part because sanitation crews have to travel farther and spend more time picking up recyclable material than when they are collecting garbage.

Vito A. Turso, a deputy sanitation commissioner, said that a work crew can fill a regular garbage truck with 10 to 12 tons of trash during a seven-hour shift and have time to take the load to a transfer station. But the same crew on recycling duty will pick up only 3 to 5 tons of recyclables, because residents do not put out everything that can be recycled. “There are plenty of other things on the metal, plastic, paper and glass side that can be recycled, and if people were more ambitious about recycling those materials, there would be less in the waste stream.” Mr. Turso said.

Previous analyses of recycling costs have been challenged by either advocates of recycling or city officials because of disputes over the way the Sanitation Department accounts for costs. Lorenzo N. Cipollina, the department’s deputy commissioner for financial management, worked with the DSM consultants as they prepared their analysis. “We have no big disagreement with how they want to look at the numbers,” he said.

The DSM analysis excludes labor costs not explicitly related to picking up recyclables that the department has traditionally included in its calculations about recycling. They include leaf composting, curbside pickup of household appliances and even workers sometimes assigned to snowplowing. Mr. Cipollina said that as the cost of shipping garbage to out-of-state landfills rises, and as the price the city can get for recycled material increases, recycling will make more sense.

“The message here is that every ton of paper not put into the refuse stream yields us 7 to 10 dollars a ton, as opposed to paying a $100 per ton disposal fee on the other end,” he said. “We are in full agreement that recycling at the curb is a good program.”

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