Project Information Sheet s1

Project Information Sheet

Glass plus project – sustainable ceramic tiles from Cathodic Ray Tube (GLASS Plus)

Programme area: Material recycling, innovative ceramic tiles production using recycled CRT glass

Coordinator: Meta Meta SpA, Italy E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +39 0536 928511 Partners: Full name of the organisation (not only acronym), full name of country Consorzio Re.Media, Italy RELIGHT Srl, Italy Vallone Srl, Italy ASEKOL s.r.o., Checz Republic Ceramiche REFIN SpA, Italy Website: www.glassplus.eu

Benefits GLASS Plus project reduces the disposal of post consumer end of life (max. 150 CRT diverting second raw materials toward an innovative production characters incl. process aimed at manufacturing innovative high quality fine space): stoneware ceramic tiles. A reduction in the use of energy, the overall carbon footprint and pollution derives. Precious raw materials – often extracted from mines in other continents – need is strongly reduced, as well.

Keywords: CRT panel glass recycling, innovative ceramic tiles, eco innovative product Sector: NACE code1 and description (C23.31.00- Manufacture of ceramic tiles and flags) Type of solution Innovative product and related process

Duration: 09/09/2010 – 08/12/2011 Budget: € 1.135.159 (EU contribution: 49,88%) Contract number: ECO/09/256055/SI2.568802

Summary The current global market shift from standard CRT (Cathodic Ray Tube) devices toward new LCD, plasma or LED monitors and TV sets, will stimulate in the next years an increase in the CRTs waste quantities. In the meanwhile, new CRTs won’t be any longer required, preventing or anyway limiting a closed loop recycling flow approach. Recycling CRT glass requires a proper waste collection and an enhanced recycling process, due to some potentially dangerous components contained and to the industrial second raw materials requirement needed to be reused in the production of new items. Therefore it is really important focusing on the end-of-life CRT utilization process, especially when the resulting raw material is used to manufacture new product in an open-loop recycling approach. GLASS Plus aims at using the recycled CRT glass – properly treated – to produce high quality, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) compliant ceramic tiles through an innovative industrial process adopting state of the art technologies and know how. These will save natural resources and energy, giving new life to a precious industrial waste.

1 http://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/index/nace_all.html

The whole process – from CRTs to ceramic tiles – will be addressed; innovative materials will be then put onto the market. The GLASS Plus project is indeed focused on processes and technologies for the recycling plants (to get better quality recycled glass) and the ceramic plant (to develop dedicated production lines), as well as for the new generation ceramic goods promotion to the market. GLASS Plus project is focused on: - refining the end to end industrial process, in order to achieve a better efficiency, in industrial terms; - setting up two innovative plants for the pre-processing of the CRT glass; - setting up an innovative plant for the atomized ceramic powders production, in order to better use the CRT glass instead of the feldspar normally used in the ceramics production; - fine tuning the production phase of the ceramic goods; - exploiting the final products, analyzing the market potential and constraints to boost the product sales; - disseminating the GLASS Plus process and technology, to facilitate the reuse and spread of this new solution; - furthering the market uptake of the final ceramic products.

The GLASS Plus project gathers Meta and REFIN – two companies of the Concorde Group, an Italian based enterprise with a global leadership in the ceramic tiles market –, RELIGHT and Vallone – two recycling plants specialised in the CRT glass recovery, ReMedia and ASEKOL – respectively an Italian and a Czech WEEE collecting systems. The members of the project wide experience in the industrial sectors concerned is a guarantee for the quality of the results. The GLASS Plus project aims at manufacturing fine stoneware ceramic tiles which very high technical features adhere to the most severe requirements both at European and International level, even if recycled CRT glass is used inside the ceramic body.

Expected and/or achieved results - GLASS Plus project aims at the industrial implementation of a proved, innovative state-of-the-art production process starting from end-of-life CRTs panels recycling focused on the production of innovative ceramic tiles. - The utilisation of recycled CRT panel glass brings to the reduction on the use of natural “feldspar”, a mineral currently used in the body of the standard tiles and the Zirconium compounds – used as whitening ingredient. These materials requires to be extracted from quarries or mines – bearing an heavy burden in environmental and energy terms. Moreover they comes from far away – e.g. from the Turkey, South Africa, Australia – consuming a lot of transport resources. - The use of recycled CRT glass diverts big quantities of waste from the landfills, creating value and new job opportunity in the recycling industry. It is also an example of how an end of life post consumer product – also if difficult to dismantle, treat and dispose – can find a new life in a completely different sector. - The strong reduction of environmental impact obtained avoiding to transport – both by ship and on the road –raw materials from far far away (as Turkey, Ukraine, South Africa, Australia). This will imply a strong reduction both in energy saving terms and in pollution and overall carbon footprint. The carbon dioxide reduction can be estimated in about 0,7 kg CO2 per square meter manufactured, bringing to hundreds of tons of reduction per year. - The use of recycled CRT panel glass diverts big quantities of waste from the landfills, creating value and new job opportunity in the recycling industry. It is also an example of how an end of life post consumer product – also if difficult to dismantle, treat and dispose – can find a new life in a completely different sector. - Using ceramic tiles containing high percentage of recycled CRT panel glass let the designer to gain LEED (Leadership in Environment and Energy Design) score to classify the building under construction. This facilitate the Energy certification of the building itself, tank to this new sustainable building American standard. The utilization of building materials containing recycled CRT glass could indeed be used to increase the MR credits (Material and resources 4.1 and 4.2), thanks to the content of at least 20% of post-consumer recycled raw materials.

The information sheet will be published in the Eco-Innovation website. The EACI reserves the right to edit the information sheet for content and length