Building a Sustainability Benchmarking Framework of Ceramic Tiles Based on Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA)

The purpose of this paper is to determine indices of environmental, economic and social sustainability related to the Italian production of ceramic tiles in porcelain stoneware in order to contribute to the construction of a reference benchmarking useful to decision makers, designers and end users of ceramic tiles. To achieve this goal, this paper is based on the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) framework that incorporates the three dimensions of sustainability with cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) tools. The study has shown that in the production of porcelain stoneware one of the major environmental problems, in addition to production in the strict sense, is the distribution system of the product to end users and, to a lesser extent but always significant, the process of supplying raw materials. Finally, it was highlighted that the joint use of the three impact assessment tools (LCA, LCC, S-LCA) requires further methodological work to avoid the risk of double counting of sustainability performance. This research has adopted a detailed methodological approach, both in the collection and in the processing of data, keeping the main phases of the production process separate. In this way, it has been possible to highlight that the major environmental criticalities are just beyond the gate of the ceramic factories, along the logistics chain. The study also proposes for the Italian ceramic sector not only indicators of environmental sustainability but also economic and social.