Some Questions about Recycling

This past Christmas there was a notification from the municipal government in my town about Christmas tree disposal. Residents were told that the city would not be picking up trees, rather it was each residents responsibility to take their tree somewhere to be chipped an disposed of. Doesn't sound like anything more than a minor pain in the ass, right?
But it got me thinking. I don't know the reasons behind the city's decision, but I can imagine that the environment had something to do with it, having the trees recycled into mulch rather than going into landfills. What I'm wondering though, isn't this actually more harmful to the environment? I can understand not wanting trees going into the garbage, but wouldn't it be much better for the environment if the city were to do the collection and disposal at a central location than putting the onus on the individual residents? Think about this for a second, in the hopes of improving the environment, the city wants each household to bundle their tree up in their personal vehicle and take it to one of several locations where it can be chipped into mulch. Doesn't it seem that the amount of fossil fuels burned in this endeavor would pump far more carbon dioxide into the air than a few trucks picking all these trees up.

This got me thinking about recycling as a whole. Now I'll preface this by saying I don't in anyway have any answers on this, all I'm doing is asking the question, something that seems to be taboo where recycling is concerned.

It seems to me that there is little debate left that global warming is the most pressing environmental issue that we face today. That being the case, I'm curious just how much recycling is doing to help alleviate global warming, or is it just contributing to the problem. What I mean by that is this, in my city, much like I imagine most cities, we have two different curbside pickups, one for trash, and another for recyclables. That would appear to me to be doubling the amount of carbon dioxide been pumped into the air for trash removal, instead of having one truck picking up the lot. On top of that recycling centers consume quite a bit of energy which again is usually produced from the burning of fossil fuels, which dumps yet more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Now I'm not saying that recycling in and of itself is a bad thing, on the contrary, I think it's a good thing, however, I think one has to weigh what is the more urgent issue right now. Isn't it worth it in the long run to use more landfill space right now if it would help to lessen the danger of global warming? Either that or is there some carbon neutral way to recycle, and if there is why aren't more cities adopting such methods?

I'd like nothing more than for there to be a way to do both, but perhaps it's time to do something that seems anathema to the environmental movement. Perhaps it's time a cost benefit analysis is done on recycling's impact on the climate. This research has been done on every other industry, and maybe one has been done on the recycling industry that I'm unaware of, but if not, shouldn't there be?