This looks like an opportunity for some plastics companies -- certainly recyclers, and perhaps some materials suppliers or molders -- to lend a hand. The Kingsport, Tenn., Times-News has a report on a thief who stole hundreds of large plastic totes used by a charity called the Santa Train for the past 16 years.

According to the story, Ed Moore, manager of the Food City store in Kingsport, has stored about 700 of the large totes in a parking lot adjacent to the store for the past 16 years. But sometime on Wednesday afternoon, a "Grinch driving [a] flatbed truck," as the paper described the suspect, stole the totes.

I wonder if he plans to use them, or if he was thinking that he would sell them for scrap.

Moore said the totes cost $12 each when they were new, and he thinks they'd cost twice that much today. He still hopes the person responsible will return the totes, or someone will turn him in. In the meantime, plastics recyclers in the area should watch for someone looking to sell all that scrap.