CROSSVILLE, TENN.—Officials with domestic tile manufacturer Crossville Inc. announced the company recycled 14,255,082 pounds of fired porcelain in 2014, bringing the company’s cumulative recycling total to nearly 53.5 million pounds since the 2009 launch of the Tile Take-Back program and subsequent TOTO USA recycling partnership.
These recycling initiatives are based on the company’s proprietary process for recycling fired porcelain products, including post-consumer materials. Through Tile Take-Back, Crossville is able to recycle previously installed tile collected from its distribution network, as well as scraps that result from tile cutting during installation, sizing, or sample creation. Through its TOTO partnership, Crossville receives pre-consumer fired porcelain toilets that do not meet quality standards; prior to the partnership, these cast-offs were being sent to landfills for disposal.
All 53.5 million pounds of diverted material have been or will be recycled into feed stock to manufacture new tile, leading Crossville to maintain net waste consumption at its plants for a fourth consecutive year. Net waste consumption is achieved by using more waste than is created during production.
More Than 8 Million Pounds from TOTO
Through the aforementioned recycling initiatives, in 2014 Crossville ground and reused 6,040,062 pounds of fired scrap produced at the company’s plants that would have previously gone to landfills. Crossville received and recycled 160,640 pounds of waste including scraps and post-consumer tile extracted from renovation projects (up from 87,411 pounds in 2013), and received and recycled 8,054,380 pounds of TOTO’s scrap porcelain—an increase of 765,520 pounds from 2013.
Since the Tile Take-Back launch in 2009, the company’s cumulative recycling totals include more than 24 million pounds of fired scrap produced at Crossville’s plants, more than 460,000 pounds of scrap and post-consumer tile, and just over 29 million pounds of scrap porcelain from TOTO USA.
Crossville officials noted that the amount of fired porcelain waste acquired from the marketplace as part of Tile Take-Back increased significantly in 2014, indicating increased support and participation from the company’s distribution network. Likewise, the amount of scrap porcelain from TOTO was up in 2014, further contributing to the yearly and cumulative totals.
Tile Take-Back and the TOTO USA partnership are just two of many sustainable practices Crossville maintains companywide. In 2014, Crossville released the first-ever Sustainability Report by a tile-only manufacturer.
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