Ecological tiles from Urban Waste Glass and Construction & Demolition Waste

In 2014 Total Waste generated in the EU-28 by all economic activities and households amounted to 2495 million tonnes (mt), 491 mt of which composed of Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) (Eurostat, 2017). From the perspective of circular economy, building rubbles and other urban waste should be transformed and reused for the production of second raw materials to obtain new building materials, reducing also the consumption of virgin raw material from quarries and the energy necessary for their transformation into intermediate products for construction. Aim of this work is to evaluate the environmental and economic sustainability to produce tile containing a high quantity of CDW and glass waste. Here we report the results obtained by the ECO TILES EU-Life project aimed at designing ecological grit-tiles (commercially known as terrazzo tiles). The project is a collaboration between the University of Camerino (Italy) and the Italian company Grandinetti Ltd. (GRA). The terrazzo tiles are cement-based products traditionally made with limestone aggregate and powder, which in ECO TILES are substituted by glass and CDW for up to 70% of the components. The methods adopted for this research activity are the following: analysis of the components and evaluation of the ECO TILES products, full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), questionnaires and interviews to determine the propensity of consumers to purchase recycled tiles, surveys on a sample of Italian companies producing terrazzo tiles and a case study of the production cost of ecological grits per square meter. The project demonstrated the possibility of manufacturing terrazzo tiles starting from second raw materials obtained by selected wastes capable of: 1) providing the same technical performance as conventional tiles; 2) improve the production chain from an environmental point of view, shown by the results of Full LCA proving that the environmental impact during their production is significantly lower than the traditional terrazzo tiles; 3) maintain economic sustainability for the enterprise and 4) meet market demand for ecological tiles. Consumers think that ECO TILES is an innovative way of recycling waste and are willing to pay an increased sale price than traditional grits. ECO TILES production method can reduce environmental impact and overall improvement of quality of life with production costs comparable to traditional tiles. The results stimulate the adoption of the virtuous circular economy policies in the construction sector: to favour consumer preferences over recycled products, to encourage companies to provide environmental quality assurance for the products and to certify the environmental traceability of raw materials used and production method adopted.