INAX Collects and Recycles 10 Tons of Waste Tiles

INAX Corporation, a major Japanese supplier of ceramic building materials and equipment, fully launched in March 2004 a collection and recycling system of waste tiles by raising the collection amount from two to ten tons per month. This is a new type of recycling-based system in which waste tiles from construction sites are recycled into raw materials to make new tiles. The waste tiles have so far been simply treated as industrial waste. The company has gradually implemented the system in its plants since October 2003.

The yearly amount of tile raw materials used at INAX is in the hundreds of thousands of tons. Up to 10 percent of this came from defective tiles made at its plants. In the new system, waste tiles collected from construction sites are ground into particles of less than a few millimeters in size and then mixed with raw materials such as clay, just as was done with in-plant defective tiles in the past.

Customers such as general contractors pay about 4,000 yen (about U.S.$38) per ton as a waste disposal fee. This cost, however, is less than that of landfilling. The waste tiles are collected by INAX delivery trucks on the way back from deliveries.

INAX aims to become a recycling-based company by using a "make, use and return" life cycle for its products. In early 2003, the company's three plants, including the Iga Plant in Mie Prefecture, obtained an official government designation as a general recycler of industrial waste from the Ministry of the Environment. It was first in the ceramic building material industry to do so. Waste tiles are collected mainly in the Tokyo metropolitan area, the Tokai area in central Japan and the Kansai area in western Japan that includes Osaka. The company aims to be collecting 20 to 30 tons of waste tiles monthly by March 2005.



Posted: 2004/07/06 10:20:49 AM
Japanese version