30 - Infotile

INTERVIEW
tile
ADVANCED CERAMICS
SPECIFICATION
PROJECT
STANDARDS
Thousands of ecolabelled tiles
are available to local buyers
We examine the existing Good Environmental Choice Australia
(GECA) Hard Surface Standard and its acceptance by the Green
Building Council of Australia (GBCA). We also consider why few
local importers of tiles that have been granted an EU Ecolabel
make a concerted effort to promote the benefits associated with
the use of more than 6000 products, which are available from
leading European manufacturers that export to Australia.
Finally, we review some of the amazing new developments in
relation to the use of solid wastes as low-cost alternative raw
materials for use in ceramic tile production.
The ANZ Bank Docklands, Melbourne is a 6-Star, Green Star rated
project. Large amounts of imported bluestone were used because
the required points could be earned in other areas. If floor and wall
finishes were a critical component of the Green Star point calculation,
alternative surface finishes would have been specified.
30 | TILE TODAY #83 | www.infotile.com/publications
F
ollowing prolonged consultation
with GECA the Australian Tile
Council (ATC) and the Australian
Stone
Advisory
Association
(ASAA) established Hard Surfacing
Standard #40 which covers tile and
stone. The GBCA recognises the GECA
standard and will award maximum
Green building points to tile and stone
products which GECA has certified.
Surprisingly, not one producer
or importer has attempted to gain a
GECA ecolabel for any of the products
they supply. The reasons for this are
complex.
Many tile and stone suppliers appear
to think that specifiers have no real alternatives when it comes to selecting
hard wearing, easy to clean surface finishes for use in public spaces and wet
areas. Put simply, architects will specify
tile in wet areas because they have few
alternatives.
In some instances the hard surface
finishes do not play a key part in achieving the required Green Star rating for a
particular development. The points are
accumulated by specification of other
products, including big ticket items.
A case in point is the highly acclaimed ANZ Bank development in
Docklands, Melbourne, which boasts
one of the most sustainable fit-outs
in Australia. The premises achieved
6-star Green Star (office interiors) V1.1
certification in July 2012. Copious
amounts of imported bluestone were
supplied and installed by Baron Forge
because the required Green Star rating was obtained by designing maximum efficiencies in water and energy
consumption.
If the hard surface finishes were a
critical component of Green Star calculations, the architects and developers
may have been forced to use an alternative finish like one of the 6000 ecolabelled Italian tiles – many of which
imitate stone – that are available from
a variety of leading Italian manufacturers that export to Australia.
Of course, the availability of a locally
quarried bluestone which had achieved
an ecolabel would have resolved that
problem, but since there are none,
the developers would look overseas in
search of a sustainable bluestone. Our
research indicates that they would have
been disappointed because it appears
that there is no European or internationally produced bluestone products
that have appropriate environmental
credentials.
In fact, if one visits the huge
European Union (EU) ecolabel website
and conducts a search for ecolabelled
natural stone in the ‘hard surfaces’
flooring section, the ensuing results illustrate that more than 6000 Italian
ceramic tiles have gained an ecolabel.
In all probability, Australian bluestone was not used at the ANZ project
because none of our producers have
earned an ecolabel for their product,
and when the search was extended
overseas, cheaper alternatives were
discovered.
Ecolabelled tiles
Visitors to www.ecolabel.eu can search
through listings of ecolabelled products and services under multiple headings like Beauty Care, Cleaning Up,
Clothing, DIY, Furniture and Floor
Coverings. The latter includes a section on Hard Floor Coverings which
is searchable. A search for ecolabelled
Italian tile yields over 6000 results. The
following list reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of
Italian manufacturers:
Atlas Concorde (their entire product
portfolio)
Caesar
Ceramica Castelvetro
Ceramica Magica
Cotto D’Este
FAP
Florim
Italgraniti
Keope
Marazzi
Marco Corona
Mirage
Novabell
Panaria
Polis
Sant‘Agostino
Supergres
As stated all of these companies export to Australia, yet to my knowledge
none of the importers have approached
GECA to use the manufacturers’ existing EU certification to gain a local
ecolabel.
In some instances, architects use
the service of another company to procure information about ecolabelled tiles
which are available in Australia. These
products may not earn points because
they do not have local accreditation but
they at least tick the right box in terms
of having appropriate environmental
credentials.
There is obviously a cost attached to
obtaining an ecolabel, and this may prevent some companies from going down
that path, but gaining GECA accreditation for a product that already has an
EU ecolabel is obviously less expensive
than starting from the ground up to
get a locally manufactured tile or stone
product ecolabelled.
Are specifiers seeking
ecolabelled tiles?
According to the GBCA, 7.2 million
square metres of Green Star certified space has been developed around
Australia, and an additional 8 million
square metres is on the drawing board.
Clearly, vast quantities of wall and floor
surface finishes have been specified,
and even more will be specified for future use.
Presumably architects, designers
and developers are seeking surface finishes which have an ecolabel. A good
indicator of this activity can be found
in the internet service provider logs for
traffic on Infotile.com during the month
of March.
Two years ago, Infotile launched an
ecolabel section which includes numerous tiles and allied products that have
an EU Ecolabel or alternative international accreditation. Unlike the EU
All of Atlas Concorde’s (Italy) tile ranges have received an EU Ecolabel. Leading
wholesalers like DW Tiles (Sydney) import these materials.
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ARCHITILE
website, the Infotile listings provide
details of local suppliers of the products
in question. A glance at Table 1 reveals
that the ecolabel segment attracted
3642 views during March, the fourth
most visited page out of 5020 different
pages. Importantly, over 720 visitors
came straight to the ecolabel page and
exited the site from it, thus indicating
that their visit related to ecolabelled
products entirely.
Significantly, the Product Profiles
segment of Infotile, which houses images and information pertaining to
several hundred tiles, stone and allied
products, attracted 7043 views during
March. The site is heavily promoted to
specifiers via ATP’s monthly Tile and
Stone e-news and evidently many of
them are seeking information on ecolabelled tile and stone products.
I wonder just how many of the companies that import ecolabelled tiles
from the listed Italian manufacturers
actively promote the fact that these
products have valuable environmental
credentials. How many realise that the
acquisition of a local ecolabel could lead
to valuable sales?
Damian Turco of Cerdomus Tile
Studio, Richmond was probably the
first Australian importer to go through
the process of gaining an ecolabel for
an imported ceramic product when he
invested in gaining accreditation for
Kalebodur’s (Turkey) Sinterflex slim
porcelain panels. An architect engaged
in a specific product wanted to use the
material, providing it had a local ecolabel. Damian stepped into the breach
and the product was specified and successfully installed.
Damian confirmed, “A small number of additional specifications have occurred because we invested in obtaining
an ecolabel.”
The EU Ecolabel distinguishes products and services that meet high environmental and performance standards.
Every accredited tile passes rigorous
tests with results verified by an independent body. The EU label stands for
‘lower environmental impacts throughout a product’s life cycle – from the
use of materials to make them, to final
disposal’.
There is no telling how many orders
are being lost, but if one considers that
virtually every significant manufacturer of alternative hard and resilient
surface materials active in Australia
has earned a local ecolabel, the figure
is probably high. Hospital and supermarket floors are awash with sheet
vinyl products that will not last as
long as tile, but they have appropriate
accreditation.
Alternative solid wastes
While a degree of apathy exists in the
local industry in relation to the green
attributes of tile, overseas-based manufacturers are striving to find solid
wastes that can be used instead of the
virgin raw materials that are used in
the relatively complex production of ceramic tiles.
Professor Salma M. Naga recently
reported the following activities in an
intriguing article entitled, ‘Recycling
of Fish Bone Ash in the Preparation of
Stoneware Tiles’, which appeared in the
February-March edition of Interceram
magazine.
a)Waste-derived and recycled
glass was used to completely
replace ordinary feldspar flux
in the preparation of ‘glassbased’ stoneware tiles.
b) Soda-line, soda-line-silica, calcium-alumina-silica and cathode ray tube glasses were used
for partial or total replacement of the natural fluxes in
ceramic manufacturing.
c) The use of waste materials
provides an environmental
safeguard by saving natural
resources and reducing energy consumption and CO2
emissions
d)
Glaze sludge and glassceramic frits were used to
replace from 10 to 100 per
cent of the non-plastic raw
materials in stoneware tile
manufacturing.
The Internet Service Provider logs for Infotile.com reveal significant interest in searches for
ecolabelled tile and stone products.
32 | TILE TODAY #83 | www.infotile.com/publications
e)Ornamental
rock-cutting
wastes, mainly composed
of K-feldspar, Na-feldspar,
quartz, mica, calcite and
hematite, were also used
to replace natural fluxes in
stoneware tile production.
f) Waste from granite rock cutting and polishing was used by
Torres et al and Hojamberdiev
et al to prepare ceramic tiles.
They showed that tiles containing granite waste are
mechanically stronger, less
porous and more resistant to
pyroplastic deformation than
commercial tiles.
g)Acchar et al evaluated the
fluxing effect of coffee husk
ash added to clay-based ceramic formulations. They
showed that coffee husk ash
can replace feldspar in the
production of porcelain floor
tiles over a content range
from 25 up to 40 mass-per
cent of clay-based ceramic
formulas.
Apparently any calcium-containing
raw materials are potentially suitable
fluxing additives in the production of
ceramic bodies.
Professor Salma M. Naga is currently Professor of Ceramics Chemistry
and Technology at the National
Research Centre in Cairo, Egypt. She
was ideally placed to participate in an
extensive study which concluded that
fish bone ash ‘could be useful as a biologically and environmentally compatible raw material media in the ceramic
industry’.
Between 18 million and 30 million
tons of fish waste is discarded worldwide annually. The highest current reuse of fish skeletons occurs in Egypt in
the animal feed industry.
The overall objective of the study was
to evaluate the consequences of partial
replacement of traditional feldspar by
fish bone ash in the production of stoneware tiles, and to measure changes in
the tile’s densification and mechanical
properties. The study concluded that
it ‘is feasible to replace potash feldspar
with fish bone ash in recipes for stoneware tile’.
These studies illustrate the amazing efforts which are undertaken to
manufacture sustainable tiles with a
low environmental footprint. Many of
the aforementioned tiles made in Italy
acquired an EU Ecolabel because of the
high percentage of recycled materials
used in production processes. Hopefully,
more Australian importers and retailers will make an effort to promote the
growing number of high quality, environmentally-friendly products that lie
at our disposal.