Crossville, Tenn.—Crossville has outlined its tile recycling efforts for the last year, and said it recycled 4,939,251 pounds of fired porcelain in 2020. The amount brought the company’s cumulative recycling total to more than 139 million pounds since the 2009 launch of the Tile Take-Back program and subsequent TOTO USA recycling partnership.
The tile recycling initiatives are based on the company’s proprietary process for recycling fired porcelain products. Through Tile Take-Back, Crossville said it was 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, the company receives pre-consumer fired porcelain toilets that do not meet quality standards. Prior to the partnership, the cast-offs were sent to landfills for disposal but are now recycled for manufacturing new tile, according to Crossville.
All 139 million cumulative pounds of the recycled material is expected to be introduced to the tile production process. Through the use of recycled material during manufacturing, Crossville said it was able to maintain its status as a net consumer of waste for the ninth consecutive year. Net waste consumption is achieved by using more waste than is created during production, the company explained.
The following is a breakdown of Crossville’s total of 4,939,251 pounds of fired porcelain recycled in 2020:
- 4,061,888 pounds of fired scrap product at the company’s plant
- 779,880 pounds of TOTO’s scrap porcelain
- 97,483 pounds of post-consumer waste from the Tile Take-Back program
Additionally, Crossville stated it removed 2,421,873 pounds of filtrate solids from dirty water and recycled it back into tile production in 2020.