Crosville, Tenn. — Crossville, a domestic porcelain tile manufacturer based in Crossville, Tenn., announced the latest results of two of its recycling initiatives: the Tile Take-Back Program and the collaboration with TOTO USA. Both initiatives are based on Crossville’s proprietary process for recycling fired porcelain products, including post-consumer materials; this is a capability unique to the manufacturer.
Between both Tile Take-Back and the TOTO USA partnership, Crossville has diverted 11.2 million pounds of fired porcelain from landfills during the last two years (as of April 30, 2012). All of the company’s U.S.-made products contain a minimum of 20 percent scrap fired porcelain and/or post-consumer reclaimed materials. In 2011, Crossville became a net consumer of waste because of the magnitude of its recycling initiatives.
The Tile Take-Back program is Crossville’s answer to the major environmental problem facing the tile industry today: the recycling of fired tile. Because this program is so beneficial industrywide, Crossville openly accepts post-consumer tile from other brands and projects not originating from Crossville, as well.
Millions of Pounds of Tile Recycled
From 2009 to April 2012, the company has recycled more than 4 million pounds of fired tile produced at the company’s plants that would have previously gone to landfills, received and processed 159,188 pounds of post-consumer tile from outside tile renovation projects, and yielded more than 141,000 square feet of tile produced with post-consumer recycled tile in it, thanks to Tile Take-Back.
In 2011, Crossville partnered with sanitaryware manufacturer TOTO USA to receive and recycle that company’s fired porcelain refuse. Today, there is recycled content in every square foot of porcelain tile produced by Crossville because of the harvested material from TOTO, reducing the need for raw materials for tile production.
Since February 2011, Crossville has received and recycled more than 7,074,060 million pounds of scrap porcelain from TOTO and achieved the inclusion of recycled content in 100 percent of the company’s U.S. production.