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To the best of my knowledge these 'Tetra Pak' style cartons are composed of several layers of paper, foil, and plastic. While technically recyclable, the sandwich of materials won't be handled in a standard paper recycling stream nor with composting.

In my municipality these cartons are collected along with other recyclables, and are then sorted into the appropriate stream. However, if you don't have a recycling facility that accepts the cartons then they unfortunately belong in the general waste for landfill/incineration.

Los Angeles specifically says not to recycle coated milk cartons, but I would rinse off the cap and recycle that.

It completely depends on your municipality. Where i live all milk cartons and there lids are recycled. you do not pull the spout on, you just crush it and add them to the bin.

I would go to your cities website and look up their policies.

They aren't recyclable where we are, so for a while we were saving them and turning them into blocks for the kids. I didn't realize how much milk we went through until we were overrun with milk carton blocks!

http://www.werecyclecartons.com/

We can put them in the recycling whole in Louisville, KY.
Definitely DON'T put plastic in your compost pile. The waxy boxes make me nervous the same way you shouldn't put the 'glossy' advertisements in the compost. There are a lot of chemicals that are going to act negatively with your pile.
Regular wax paper should be fine in the bin, but the multilayered milk cartons might need to be recycled in a different way.

those milk cartons dont have a foil layer, just the plastic spout. Same with most OJ cartons of that type. Where I live, they go in the paper recycling.

I usually recycle the cap and toss the carton in the trash, ugh.

Is there a reason distributers put organic milk and soy milk in the cartons? In most of the places I lived, the plastic jugs were recyclable but not the cartons. Since I buy these products for environmental reasons I'm a little puzzled that Horizon, Silk and our grocery's organic house brand all come in the cartons (except for the gallon sizes.)

The recyclability of the carton will differ from region to region. But I know that the caps can be recycled at any branch of Aveda (I have a bag at my office where I collect co-workers caps and hump them over to the nearest location).

In NYC milk cartons (and OJ cartons and similar) go in with #1 and #2 plastics. The caps aren't recyclable here (they are usually #5 PP, and should say on the cap, so double check before you throw them in the recycling!).

Like jk2 I live in NYC where the cartons can go into the curbside recycling. I recommend checking your local recycling guidelines to see if these are recyclable in your area. Regarding the caps, they can be taken to an Aveda store or salon that participates in the Aveda caps program: http://aveda.aveda.com/aboutaveda/caps.asp

I save my milk cartons, cut off the tops, poke holes in the bottom, and start plants for my vegetable garden - tomatoes, squash, herbs, etc.

I refill them with homemade soup stock for freezing, using a funnel. A cheap way to avoid freezing in plastic.

I had this question too, thanks everyone for the good answers.

Just to clarify though, it sounds like some people are talking about the soy milk type containers and others are talking about the waxy paper milk or oj containers. I believe these are made of different materials and may need to be handled differently.