Recycling insight into the ceramic tile manufacturing industry

The ceramic tile industry is one of the most important industrial sectors in Italy, with almost 90% of the whole production located in the Emilia-Romagna region. In this paper, the waste management and recycling practices in force among Italian ceramic tile manufacturers are reported and discussed on the basis of performance indicators determined thanks to the elaboration of a large amount of industrial data collected in the period 2013–2020. In particular, parameters such as annual water consumption (Cw) and demand (Dw), recycling factor of solid waste (Rsw) and water (Rw) and different kinds of waste generated in the process have been monitored for three different production layouts. Such indicators exhibit that recycling is a well-established practice in Italian ceramic tile production and only a minor amount of hazardous waste (exhausted lime) is land-filled.