Challenges to the US Glass Industry-Will the US Manufacture Glass in 2020?

摘要

I shall begin with a positive statement: in 2020, and in the years beyond 2020, glass will continue to be in large scale world-wide use. Glass is too important a material to see a significant decline in its overall use. Glass is truly the most aesthetic of materials. It captures the light of our world and highlights a fine red wine in a glass, or allows windows that can open up our rooms and provide external views that bring that light to us. Similarly glass has the ability to be very hygienic and can be readily sterilized, accounting for its importance in laboratory and medical glassware. Glass can be produced in so many forms and shapes, from large glass plates that glisten in our skyscrapers, to fibrous forms to create fine insulation products which provides durability so they can be retained in walls and attics for years. In another fibrous form and when properly handled and coated, glass provides the most economical reinforcement to plastics and other matrices, so that low weight and high strength products are produced. Glass will continue in these and in many other forms to be useful and competitive against other materials.