Plastic crates will deteriorate and ultimately fail due to brittle fracture if, either during use or storage, they are exposed to sunlight. The time to failure depends on the UV stability of the polymer used, but in particular also on the conditions of use, such as time of exposure, height of the stack during stocking, rate of circulation and manner of transportation. Because of differences in the conditions of use, the time to failure of creates of the same batch will be different. The decrease of the size of a particular batch in time can be described by a Weibull-function, an empirical, statistical function. Knowledge of this function for a batch provides the possibility to predict reliably the number of crates to be rejected in forthcoming years. The UV stability of recycled, degraded high density polyethylene (HDPE) create material appears to be hardly dependent on the degree of degradation, although it is lower than the UV stability of the type of HDPE originally used for production of the creates. The UV stability can, however, be markedly enhanced by the addition of a proper stabiliser system. The tensile impact strength and the meltindex of recycled HDPE depend also hardly on the degree of degradation and are, in general, sufficient for crate material. It is concluded that recycling of degraded crates, even of embrittled crates, and reuse of the material for the production of new crates, is worthwile to be considered. © 1985 Hüthig & Wepf Verlag, Basel