Sustainable Material Innovation: Environmental and Economic Analysis of Waste as Alternative to Virgin Raw Material in the Ceramic Industry

The ceramics industry supply chain has an environmental impact of approximately 400 MtCO2 per year. In this sector, many waste materials can be substituted for virgin materials, avoiding new extraction and reducing the amount sent to landfill. The impact of these recycling practices is measured using various approaches, e.g. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), but these are data intensive and therefore difficult to apply in the context of small and medium sized enterprises where extensive data collection is impractical. To enable these realities to measure the impact of sustainable practices and assess their scalability, this thesis developed a simplified LCA methodology. At the cost of a certain degree of accuracy with respect to the ISO standards, the developed methodology can produce reliable results using easily accessible data and thus without the cost of additional measurements. The expected impact of this solution is to enable a more direct measurement of the environmental impact of production and to increase process owners’ awareness of emissions and key drivers.