Milk crates fuel black market

LOS ANGELES – For decades, college kids have used stolen milk crates as the basic building blocks of coffee tables and dorm room shelves.

Now, a new breed of crate rustler is cashing in by swiping thousands of the containers from loading docks and selling them to shady recyclers.

The containers are chopped into bits and shipped to booming factories in China to be made into a variety of products, from pipes to flower pots.

…In the past two years, the high-density polyethylene has joined a growing list of materials that are being stolen and sold via a thriving underground recycling network.

Among other things, thieves target copper, aluminum bleachers, beer kegs, even cemetery vases and nameplates.

It took a while for dairies to determine what was happening to their crates.

“If it were just college kids taking them, the dormitories would be overflowing with milk cases,” said Stephen Schaffer, general manager of Alta Dena Dairy near Los Angeles.

The crates are made of petroleum-based plastic that has increased in value along with gasoline prices. The material now sells for 22 cents a pound, compared to 7 cents a pound in 2005, said Patty Moore, a recycling consultant in Sonoma.

Salinas Californian