[Karibou]

I like the way you broke down how those items are recyclable. It reminds me of when I go up to Mackinac Island every year for a Girl Scout service camp; we recycle and sort EVERYTHING.
We have two trash cans in every room except the dining hall. Compost trash cans are for food waste (such as leftovers from tacos), paper, and anything that can decompose. Landfill trash cans are for anything plastic or shiny, along with a few other things that obviously can't decompose.
Also, we have seperate boxes on the back porch for aluminum (such as diet coke cans), styrofoam, and 1 and 2 recyclable plastics. Cardboard (Crackerjack boxes...maybe) is thrown in a seperate "box" behind the area where we lock up our full trash bags, and it is recycled later.

(of course, the reason that WE sort everything is to minimize the landfill output of the island, but still...)

I believe that you are right in saying that the Haagen-Dazs cups are coated in some kind of plastic or wax. If we were to have Haagen-Dazs's on the island, this would cause them to be put into LANDFILL. They will not decompose as fast as the items in the compost bags will, and the cardboard cannot be re-used. Now, I haven't examined a box of Cracker Jacks lately, are the boxes just cardboard or do they have a plastic outside?

...possible outlier? Sort through what can be "recycled," and if you take anything that's not recyclable you get negative points?