Sustainability in Ceramic: Ceramic tile has a unique sustainability profile compared to other floorcoverings – Aug/Sept 2025

When it comes to sustainability in flooring, most of the talk revolves around the polymer-based categories that make up close to 70% of total domestic consumption, namely vinyl flooring and carpets and rugs, because they account for the bulk of the carbon burden of the flooring category. The other big categories have fundamentally different profiles. Biobased products like hardwood, for instance, and linoleum, have inherently strong green profiles because they’re made from renewable natural resources, sequester carbon and often have low embodied carbon through manufacturing.

The other big category, making up over 15% of the total market and found in nearly every residential and commercial application, is ceramic tile. It’s baked from a slurry that is essentially clay, sand and feldspar mixed in water. “It’s best thought of as simply human-made stone,” says Ryan Fasan, an industry consultant who specializes in Spanish tile. “We simply replicate the processes within the earth’s crust to make metamorphic stones like marble. We take natural minerals, expose them to intense pressure and heat so they fuse together to create a homogeneous hard material. This biomimetic process creates stones within hours with desirable characteristics that take the earth millions of years to achieve.”

Also unique to ceramic tile is its post-installation profile. Floorcoverings like carpet and vinyl carry an ongoing environmental burden from their cleaning and maintenance profiles and also from the rate at which they deteriorate before they need to be replaced. “Cleaning with soap and water is generally all that is needed to keep a tile floor looking like new, so it’s much less expensive to maintain over longer periods of time than other flooring types,” says Paij Thorn-Brooks, Dal-Tile’s vice president of marketing, noting that tile requires no refinishing. In terms of its durability, she adds, “It is fire resistant, chemical resistant, stain resistant, freeze/thaw resistant, and does not fade or wear in outdoor elements.” It’s also the industry standard for waterproof flooring. And all its materials are entirely inert, so it’s environmentally harmless throughout its existence.

Tile professionals typically cite 60 to 75 years as ceramic tile’s lifespan, but that’s a conservative estimate. Throughout Europe there are churches and other historical buildings that have seen daily foot traffic over tile installations for centuries. And ceramic’s lifespan has a huge impact on its carbon footprint. A polymer-based floorcovering that lasts ten years needs to be replaced six times to equal ceramic, so it’s seven installations of new synthetic flooring to just one for ceramic, conservatively.

Thorn-Brooks notes that “tile has the lowest carbon footprint of any installed flooring, over the life of the product.” And the Tile Council of North America (TCNA) concurs, citing its UL-certified EPD for North American-made ceramic tile that shows that it has the lowest environmental impact across all impact categories compared to generic EPDs of other flooring categories evaluated under the same product category rules, as laid out by NSF International. 

Crossville’s environmental product declaration (EPD) for its domestically made tile cites a global warming potential of just over 2kg CO2e/m2 for domestic tile. And its imported Laminam gauged panels are even better, at 1.02kg CO2e/m2.

Water and energy

The bulk of ceramic tile’s carbon footprint comes from production, though it also has a higher transportation burden than other flooring types due to its weight, making dematerialization an effective strategy. In fact, Thorn-Brooks notes that in 2021 Dal-Tile saved nearly 24,000 tons of raw material by reducing ceramic tile thickness-without sacrificing performance.

A lot of water is consumed in making the slurry for ceramic tile, and manufacturers have now learned how to clean and reuse it with minimal waste. Fasan points out that most of Spain’s tile industry is clustered around Castellón, a small town near Valencia whose arid conditions forced the industry to focus on water conservation. “In fact, the modern industry today loses less than 2% of the water they use per annum, and all the sediment from the process is also re-introduced to the production stream,” he says. And according to Ceramic Tiles of Italy, Italian tile facilities reuse 99% of their wastewater. So, while water is a big burden in ceramic tile production, technologies have been developed to minimize impacts.

“The most carbon-intensive aspect of tile production remains the kiln-firing process, which requires really high temperatures,” says Sofia Sabattini, Stonepeak’s director of marketing for the U.S. “This stage is traditionally powered by fossil fuels and contributes significantly to the overall footprint of ceramic tile. Decarbonizing this process is where the greatest opportunity for impact lies, and where the industry must focus its innovation and investment.”

Noah Chitty, vice president of sustainability and technical services for AHF Products, which owns Crossville, says, “The biggest challenge is natural gas-using less, maybe getting off it-and making electricity cleaner.” He notes that electricity makes up a quarter of the embodied carbon in its porcelain tiles, and natural gas accounts for another 40%.

Industry Progress

Ceramic Tiles of Italy reports that, from 1998 to 2019, the Italian ceramic tile industry saved more than 600,000 metric tons of raw materials such as clays and feldspars each year. Over the same period, the percentage of unfired and fired production waste that was reused increased from 89% to 100%. Also, in 2020, for the first time, the Italian ceramic tile industry had made so much progress that it was able to recycle 100% of its own waste as well as waste originating from other industries. By 2023, the percentage had climbed to 111%.

On the Tile of Spain side, Fasan notes, “Spain has the first operating commercial production line of ceramics firing using electricity instead of combustion,” referring to Equipe Ceramica’s operation, adding that all of Equipe’s electricity is from its photovoltaics. Fasan notes, however, that the electric solution works best for small wall tiles, not, for instance, large-format porcelain.

And in terms of hydrogen, Spain is using its ceramics industry as a case study for proof-of-concept, with multiple large-scale eletrolyzer projects completed or underway. And it’s also scaling up the use of blended fuels (LNG and locally supplied hydrogen) in large production facilities.

Tennessee-based Crossville, which does most of its business on the commercial side of the market, uses a closed-loop water system in its facility. And it’s also studying the idea of hydrogen kilns. Crossville offers five carbon-neutral lines, with some verified carbon credits to take it over the finish line. Chitty notes that the firm is working to lower its carbon footprint by 30% by 2030 from a 2019 baseline, which will translate to fewer credits to maintain carbon neutral status.

Stonepeak, another firm with a strong focus on commercial, also uses a closed-loop water system for its U.S. production. Iris Group, its Italian parent company, operates the world’s first ceramic facility powered by green hydrogen. The H2 Facility in Fiorano Modenese is where its 4D porcelain slabs are manufactured. “This innovation alone will result in the annual reduction of approximately 900 tons of CO2 emissions,” says Sabattini. The firm has also developed the Attract magnetic installation system designed for easy disassembly and reuse.

Then there’s Dal-Tile, the largest global producer of ceramic tile and part of Mohawk Industries. Dal-Tile, which sells products under the American Olean, Daltile and Marazzi brands, recycles and reuses on average over 300 million pounds of reclaimed material every year. And it recovers and reuses 84% of all process wastewater in its U.S. and Mexico facilities, over 125 million gallons last year. Also, all of Marazzi Group’s imported electricity came from renewable resources last year.

Finally, it’s worth noting that U.S. per capita ceramic tile consumption lags well behind most other significant global markets-China, Europe, Latin America, even Canada. Considering ceramic tile’s strong environmental profile, one could argue that, if tile’s traction in the U.S. market strengthens, so will the nation’s overall sustainability footprint.