Environmental impact assessment of ceramic tile manufacturing: a case study in Turkey

The purpose of this study is to analyse the manufacturing of glazed ceramic tiles, from the extraction of raw materials to the packaged product including waste management with the aims of assessing the life cycle environmental impacts and identifying the hotspots. Real and detailed data from a main ceramic tile supplier in Turkey are used in the analysis of the environmental impacts of glazed ceramic tile. Two functional units are considered: 1 m² ceramic tile and total annual production of the facility. The environmental impacts have been estimated by conducting Life cycle assessment using GaBi v9.5 software and Ecoinvent database v3.5 with CML 2001 impact assessment method. Sensitivity analysis was carried out to test the robustness of the environmental impacts. The results show that among all environmental impact categories except abiotic depletion potential elements and terrestrial ecotoxicity potential, ceramic tiles production is generating the highest impact on the environment (45.9% for human toxicity potential—73.9% for global warming potential) mainly due to high energy consumption for firing, pressing and forming and drying steps. For abiotic depletion potential elements, raw material supply stage (82.5%) is the biggest contributor while for terrestrial ecotoxicity potential, most of the impact is from raw material transportation stage (31.4%). Annually, 106,195 tonnes or around 5.1 million m² of glazed ceramic tiles production from the selected facility emits 74 kt CO₂ eq. on a life cycle basis. As far as the authors are aware, this is the first attempt at such an academic study for the ceramic sector in Turkey. The results of this work demonstrate the importance of the life cycle assessment to improve the sustainability of the ceramic sector.