more signs of our economic problems.... Plastic production not good!

[oregonindy]

Plastic pipe supplies scarce

By Melissa Campbell
Alaska Journal of Commerce

Web posted Sunday, October 16, 2005

The storage yard at Cresent Electric Supply Co. is nearly plastic free. District manager Jeff McKenzie (right) said this time of year, the yard normally has stacks of PVC and other pipe several feet high. PHOTO/Melissa Campbell/AJOC

Manufacturers of some plastics products used in construction are telling customers not to bother sending in any orders for now. The makers have nothing to sell them, suppliers in Alaska said.
Local wholesalers of electrical and some plumbing products say their stocks of plastic PVC pipe, ABS pipe and some wire products are running dangerously low.

"We're almost out of stock," said Cresent Electric Supply Co.'s Jeff McKenzie. "Our PVC conduit manufacturer is not quoting orders because they say there's no supply available."

more at http://www.alaskajournal.com/stories/101605/hom_20051016004.shtml

[napi21]

1. Is this a surprise to you? Plastic is petroleum a based product!

Are there still people who don't understand that?

[oregonindy]

3. not to me...but this is the first real "news" reporting on it.

[oregonindy]

2. no, really this is important. Realize what this means to construction?

crash and burn baby crash and burn.

No materials = no build = no money = no jobs = spiraling out of control depression in the construction field.

[NobleCynic]

4. Economically, how much could this affect?

A lack of resin will hurt PVC production, and the construction sector of the economy. What else has resin and will be hurt by this shortage?

[Old and In the Way]

5. ABS, Polycarbonante, PC-ABS, HIPP, HIPS

It's just not construction...plastics is used in just about every product.

I suspect that there may be markets out of balance...not sure that there are world-wide shortages, yet...

[Porcupine]

10. Lack of spare parts will cripple everything as peak oil settles in.

The whole world will turn into Africa. Chunks of tech that lie around unused because it broke and nobody can get a spare part in under a month maybe.

I figure that we can eliminate whole classes of useles crap and still function fine. Most items for sale at Wal Mart for instance.

[electricmonk]

6. I mentioned in another thread over the weekend

That that's the reason the price of bottled drinks have risen so much the last few weeks.

I work in a plastics injection molding factory and normally we're a just in time operation and don't keep much raw material in stock. Usually our plastic is delivered a week or 2 before we start a production run but late last month management ordered tractor-trailer loads of our most used types. Now we have stacks and stacks of 2000 lb containers all over the place. We're a specilaty molder and some of customers only order 100 to a 1000 parts at a time.

[slor]

7. Gee, they can make Hemp-oil based plastics...

and never worry again about fossil oil. Will we ever wake up in time?

[McKenzie]

8. and if another hurricane damages oil production

expect it to get much worse. This is only a taste of what will happen if oil production takes a nose dive.

Look around your house and consider just how many things are made of plastics, all of which are derived from petrochemicals. People have been trying to get this out into the open for a while now but governments are just not listening.

Peak Oil will be a rear view mirror event. By the time we realise it's happened it'll be too bloody late simply because there is no Plan B.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. I think we are there already

we are at Peak Oil world wide... it is on the way down from here on out

[McKenzie]

11. you could well be right nadinbrzezinski

maybe this is the begining of a wind down of that wasteful way of life we have been living for decades. Trouble is it will start going down faster and faster if we have hit PO and we are on the downward slope of the line on the graph.

Hope all is well as it can be.

Cheers from a drizzly am Scotland.