The late great George Carlin had a bit that I always loved.

He mocked those environmentalists who insisted they were "saving the earth" through their efforts.

"The earth will be fine," he would say. "The earth used to be molten rock. For all we know, the earth created us just because it needed something added to the eco-system, maybe plastic."

He may have been joking, but every time I go to Jim Crater's Recycling Services Inc. in North Coventry, I wonder if maybe that old cynic Carlin wasn't right. We sure seem to have made a lot of the stuff.

Most of the recycling operation is pretty simple in my house.

The stuff that the borough collects at the curb goes in the bin under the sink. And the rest goes into my little recycling center in the basement.

I've saved a couple of large boxes to hold cardboard. We have batteries in one bag, aluminum foil in another and one for metal lids and such.

All the rest of our effort in house has to do with sorting and storing the 18 million different types of plastic.

When you think if recycling plastic, you think of the water and soda bottles, maybe the one that held your favorite apple sauce. The stuff that's easy to recycling and easy to find a market for.

But when you start to look for it, you find it's everywhere and in everything and it's the weird stuff that is hard to recycle. Luckily for this area, Jim Crater is relentless and resourceful and has found niche markets for all kinds of plastics.

If you have a child under 15, then you know that nothing you buy them, with the possible exception of organic vegetables, comes without one of those form-fitted plastic packages that requires a chainsaw to open.

(In fact, some manufacturers have finally gotten religion and are making an effort to make their packaging a little less intimidating, as was featured in this Nov. 15 New York Times article .)

With Christmas just around the corner, I've begun to hunt up my bolt cutters and hacksaw in preparation for the Christmas morning wrestling match with the plastic fortresses those damn elves put on everything.

Christmas coming is also why I had to go to RSI Tuesday. I had to make room for the new influx.

Which brings me to the inspiration for this little ditty -- Jennifer Mendez and Jess Henion, the two volunteers who are masters of all things plastic.

The key to an efficient trip to the recycling center is preparation. Separating the items before you get there makes things go smoothly and keeps you from getting underfoot with the people who run the place, literally, in their spare time.

But as much as I try, the plastics always get co-mingled. There are just too many types.

I've mastered the easy stuff: Straws, microwave dinner trays, screw caps, but then even they got tricky and I had to start separating the pull tabs from milk cartons and water bottle tops from the soda tops from the plastic tabs that keep bread bags closed.

I try to keep up, but recognizing the inevitable, my largest box is the one for when I just give-up and toss it in there with the weak-kneed rationalization that "I'll figure it out later."

The easiest thing to do when it comes time to make the trip is to pull out the largest volume of mixed plastics and "leave the rest for the next time."

In our house, that means the crinkly clear containers that are used for things like baked goods from Giant. When I'm in a rush (always) I can reduce the volume in the box by filling a giant garbage bag with just that.

But eventually, the big box has to be emptied and that's when I am truly at the mercy of Jennifer and Jess, two of the most merciful people I've met.

I am constantly amazed at the patience they exhibit as I (and a hundred other supplicants) bring tiny bits of mystery plastic to them, pleading to know what number it is so we can put it in the right bin.

It's an important skill because the companies Crater has lined up to take these plastics need the stock to be pure. All the sixes need to be sixes, and not have a random four or five mixed in, otherwise it can contaminate the load and we might not soon have a place to take these plastics any more, leaving us no choice but to send it to the landfill.

No matter what they're doing, Jennifer or Jess stop and conduct a series of their particular tests that seem to require all the senses but taste.

If they can, they'll crinkle it to hear what it sounds like, bend it to see if a particular tell-tale white stress line appears. My favorite is when they tap it lightly on the side of the bin and can tell by what kind of ping it makes.

I have yet to see them taste one, but I won't be too surprised if I see it one day.

They always try to explain the trick in the hope, no doubt a vain one in my case, that I'll remember and won't have to ask next time. But my brain is so porous these days that I can't even remember what they've said from minute to minute.

And yet, despite my asking of the same question over and over, something which would have my sarcasm gene working over-drive if I were in their shoes, these two princesses of the plastic perform the same test and try, patiently to teach it to the drooling idiot standing before them.

They both have the same quiet, deliberate manner and (they say I'm not the only one to remark on this) they're even starting to look alike.

I keep trying to pull obscure plastics (is there such a thing?) out of my bag of tricks to see if I can stump them, but I never succeed.

Instead, it's me that gets stumped, time and time again.

I don't know what I'd do without RSI's plastic mavens, but we're lucky to have them.

Maybe I should get them something for Christmas ... something wrapped in plastic.

There is no shortage of information out there about the effect high oil prices are having on everything from driving habits to foods costs. You may have seen some of that information right on this here blog.

Undoubtedly, it is yet another demonstration of how much our economy turns on the cost of energy.

But this story in Reuters demonstrates just how extreme those effects can be and raises a few questions for the greater Pottstown area.

The story, if you don't have time to read the link, talks about the rising value of plastic buried in landfills.

Most plastic is made from petroleum in some form or another, so as the cost of oil goes up, so too does the value of products made from oil.

The story, which comes out of Britain, notes that prices for high quality plastics such as high-density polyethelenes (HDP) have more than doubled to between $370-560 per ton, from just a year ago.

So it's time to ask the question.

Having just about finished the final closure plan for the Pottstown Landfill, and having just signed a contract to treat its leachate, is it time to think about opening it up again to dig up the plastic?

This idea would probably has almost as many ups as downs.

On the down side, who knows what's buried there, particularly in some of the old sections that were filled long before regulators paid any attention to what was buried in the ground. Mining it could cause exposure to those hazards.

On the other hand, having a way to make a profit by digging it up could provide a financial incentive to the landfill owners, Waste Management, to investigate what's in there and ensure it is disposed of properly, all while looking for plastic in landfill sections that were filled long before recycling programs became prevalent.

Seeing as much of the leachate (the contaminated water that percolates through the landfill's trash) comes from the section of the landfill that has no cap, having something of value inside could make if affordable to dig it up and re-cap it using modern standards. Of course, that's a decision only Waste Management can make. Their landfill, their call.

Certainly, as two Berks County landfills explore ways to get energy out of their facilities by pumping and exporting cumbustible landfill gas, mining a landfill for plastics is yet another avenue by which we can recover energy from our buried waste.

But before we rush into anything hastily, we should consider the effect on the atmosphere of returning all that plastic to burnable fuel and whether the harm it's resulting greenhouse gases and toxins could cause to the environment doesn't outweigh the benefit of taking it out of the landfill.

Due to unfortunate budget cuts, the once-vast research department at The Thin Green Line is severely depleted and we cannot yet conduct that anaylsis, but the "harms/benefit analysis," as the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection likes to call it, should be done nonetheless.

Of course, the best (and least expensive) way to capture the fossil fuel energy trapped in plastic is to not send the plastic to the landfill in the first place. Yes, I'm talking about recycling.

Jim Crater over at Recycling Services Inc. in North Coventry has become a master of matching recycled materials to markets that want them. But by its nature, his effort is limited in scale by how many people bring their recyclables to the center. (Count me among them).

(Equally masterful are his volunteer specialists whose sharp eyes and sharp wits allow recycling numbskulls such as myself to make sure the No. 6 plastic goes in the No. 6 bin.)

But a truly global market for used plastic offers an opportunity for truly large-scale recycling, particularly on a municipal level, because it would not be as hard to find buyers.

So perhaps its unexpectedly good timing that the Borough of Pottstown is embarking on an ambitious program to boost its recycling.

It's driven by simple municipal economics. It costs a lot to get rid of trash at a landfill, so the more trash you keep out of the landfill, the less it costs to collect the trash and the fewer people come to yell at you at borough council meetings.

Toward that end, borough council has voted to purchase new 65-gallon recycling bins to make recycling easier for residents, and to encourage less trash going to the landfill.

You'll be able to throw it all in, cans, plastic bottles, paper, junk mail. If you have any questions, a label right on the bin will tell you what can go in.

The borough intends to test the new bins in each of the borough's five wards and The Thin Green Line has offered, and the borough has agreed, to be one of the guinea pigs.

When the bins arrive, our staff of one will let you know how it works, how its working in my house, and perhaps help you avoid some of the unexpected pitfalls that often accompany any new venture.

In the meantime, start looking at those soda bottles as something other than just something to get rid of.