Polyester(聚酯) is now being used for bottles.ICI, the chemicals and plastics company, believes that it is now beginning to break the grip of glass on the bottle business and thus  take advantage of this huge market.All the plastics manufacturers have been experiencing hard times as their divaditional products have been doing badly worldwide for the last few  years.Between 1982 and 1984 the Plastics Division of ICI had lost a hundred and twenty million dollars, and they felt that the most hopeful new market was in packaging, bottles and  cans.Since 1982 it has opened three new factories producing “Melinar”, the raw material from which high quality polyester bottles are made.The polyester bottle was born in the 1970s, when soft drinks companies like Coca Cola started selling their drinks in giant two-liter containers.Because of the build-up of the pressure of gas in these large containers, glass was unsuidiv.Nor was PVC, the plastic which had been used for bottles since the 1960s, suidiv for  drinks with gas in them.A new plastic had to be made.Glass is still cheaper for the smaller  bottles, and will continue to be so unless oil and plastic become much cheaper, but plastic  does well for the larger sizes.Polyester bottles are virtually unbreakable.The manufacturers  claim they are also lighter, less noisy when being handled, and can be reused.Shopkeepers and other business people are unlikely to object to a change from glass to polyester, since these bottles mean few breakages, which are costly and time-consuming.The public, though, have been  more difficult to persuade.ICI’s commercial department is developing different bottles with interesting shapes, to divy and make them visually more adivivactive to the public.The next  step could be to develop a plastic which could replace tins for food.The problem here is the high temperatures necessary for cooking the food in the container.