Journal
JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION
Volume 131, Issue -, Pages 583-593Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.04.131
Keywords
Ceramic tiles; Cradle-to-grave; Environmental impact; Hot spot; Improvement measures; Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
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Funding
- CTCV (Technology Center for Ceramic and Glass - Portugal)
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This study evaluates the environmental profile of ceramic tiles produced in Portugal based on a cradle to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), including mining, manufacturing, construction, use and final disposal. The main hotspots are identified and improvement actions are suggested in order to reduce the environmental impacts. According to the results, the major hotspot is the production stage (cradle-to-gate), for all categories except ecotoxicity and land use. Within this stage, the processes that have the greatest impact are the following: onsite activities (especially the burning of natural gas for the tile manufacturing process), transport, electricity production and production of natural gas. Among the improvement actions analyzed, the most efficient measure studied to reduce the environmental impacts was a combination of actions to reduce fuel consumption (best available technique), electricity and raw material transport distance, although the economic sustainability could be a critical issue. This work also identified the main environmental impact categories that can be used to define ceramic tiles environmental profile, thus encouraging an update of environmental communication tools based on LCA. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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