Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to determine indices of environmental, economic and social sustainability related to the Italian production of ceramic tiles in porcelain stoneware in order to contribute to the construction of a reference benchmarking useful to decision makers, designers and end users of ceramic tiles. To achieve this goal, this paper is based on the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) framework that incorporates the three dimensions of sustainability with cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) tools. The study has shown that in the production of porcelain stoneware one of the major environmental problems, in addition to production in the strict sense, is the distribution system of the product to end users and, to a lesser extent but always significant, the process of supplying raw materials. Finally, it was highlighted that the joint use of the three impact assessment tools (LCA, LCC, S-LCA) requires further methodological work to avoid the risk of double counting of sustainability performance. This research has adopted a detailed methodological approach, both in the collection and in the processing of data, keeping the main phases of the production process separate. In this way, it has been possible to highlight that the major environmental criticalities are just beyond the “gate” of the ceramic factories, along the logistics chain. The study also proposes for the Italian ceramic sector not only indicators of environmental sustainability but also economic and social.
Highlights
Sustainable development is one of the most important objectives of the European Union
Compared to other studies carried out on ceramic tiles, in this case, the inventory analysis separated the production process into phases in order to consider the effect that each production factor can have on overall sustainability in accordance with the principles of the TBL (Triple Bottom Line)
1 (RQ 1), this methodological approach, which is much more detailed than other studies conducted previously, was aimed at quantifying sustainability performance indicators with the best possible degree of accuracy in order to create a benchmark framework for the ceramic industry, in Italy
Summary
Sustainable development is one of the most important objectives of the European Union. The European Union is committed to the implementation of the United Nations Agenda 2030 which, adopted by world leaders in 2015, constitutes the new framework for global sustainability and establishes 17 objectives for sustainable development. Having sustainability indicators is very important in order to make the result of an analysis or the effects of a forecast understandable, while at the same time preserving the scientific nature of the analysis as much as possible. These indicators, vary according to the type of system analysed and must represent in a simple and complete way the interactions of the system under analysis with the environmental, social and economic sectors. The state of sustainable development between different systems can be achieved by horizontally comparing the sustainability indices through a “benchmarking” activity
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