CROSSVILLE, TENN.—Officials with domestic tile manufacturer Crossville Inc. announced that the company has diverted a total of 40 million pounds of fired porcelain since launching its Tile Take-Back program and TOTO USA 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 40 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 third consecutive year. Net waste consumption is achieved by using more waste than is created during production.
Achievements from Last Year
Between both Tile Take-Back and the TOTO USA partnership, Crossville achieved the following in 2013:
• ground and reused 7,706,286 pounds of fired scrap produced at the company’s plants that would have previously gone to landfills;
• received and recycled 87,411 pounds of waste including scraps and post-consumer tile extracted from renovation projects; and
• received and recycled more than 7,288,860 million pounds of TOTO’s scrap porcelain.
Since the Tile Take-Back launch in 2009, the company’s cumulative recycling totals include:
• nearly 18 million pounds of fired scrap produced at Crossville’s plants;
• more than 300,000 pounds of scrap and post-consumer tile; and
• 20.9 million pounds of scrap porcelain from TOTO USA.
Crossville officials state that the 2013 increase was the result of a higher volume of sanitaryware sent by TOTO, as well as more internally produced fired scrap resulting from the trend towards the popularity of larger and modular sizes achieved through cutting of field tile.
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