Polypropylene is one of those versatile polymers that are all around us.
It fulfills a double task, as a plastic and as a fiber.
As a plastic, it is used to make things like food containers capable of being washed in a dishwasher.
This is feasible because it does not melt below 160°C.
Polyethylene, a more common plastic, overheats to approximately 100°C, which means that polyethylene dishes would warp in the dishwasher.
As a fiber, polypropylene is used to make indoor and outdoor rugs, the kind you always find around swimming pools and miniature golf courses.
It works well for outdoor rugs because it is simple to make colored polypropylene and because polypropylene, unlike nylon, does not absorb water.
Structurally it is a vinyl polymer, similar to polyethylene, only one of the carbons of the monomer unit has a methyl group attached. Polypropylene can be made from the monomer propylene by Ziegler-Natta polymerization and by metallocene-catalyzed polymerization.