Rediscovering Tile for Sustainable Design

This transcription was made in part by an automated service, in some areas it may contain errors. 

Avi: [00:00:00] Welcome to Deep Green. I'm your host, Avi Rajagopal, the editor-in-chief of the Architecture and Interior Design Magazine, metropolis. Today's episode is produced in partnership with a HF. Tiles are among the most enduring of building materials. Glazed brick tiles have been discovered in archeological sites and in ancient and medieval buildings all around the world. The first glazed porcelain tiles, which we date back to the 15th century in China are still around today. And yet, when one thinks of sustainable building products, tile might not be the first to come to mind. More often than not, today's building industry with its culture of construct and demolish and construct and demolish, doesn't really take advantage of the inherent sustainability of tayo. [00:01:00] Instead, what we require is that building materials today should have as low of a carbon footprint of possible and should be easily reused or recycled. So how can tile with its thousands of years of history fit into today's frameworks? In turn, how can we learn to build better with this time tested building product in North America, Crossville has been a leader in making tiles more sustainable. Part of the a HF family of brands, the manufacturer has made great strides in optimizing tile manufacturing, innovating with new technologies and processes, and providing transparent information to architects, designers, and builders. My guest today, Noah Chiri, ah F's, VP of Sustainability and Technical Services, has driven many of those efforts at Crossville and is certainly the best person I know to talk about tiles and sustainability.

Noah: Thanks so much, Avi. I'm super happy to be here.

Avi: So Noah, [00:02:00] give us an introduction to sustainability and tile. What makes ceramic tile inherently sustainable and where is their scope for improvement?

Noah: I mean, I think if we, if we look back and just try and take a general view of it, probably durability and low maintenance, are, are the two things that, you know, kind of stick out. it kind of depends, you know, I mean, as you as you know, it kind of depends on when we say what's sustainable about it to, to what audience and to what, you know, what is, what is the customer looking for when they look for it.

But I think the, the qualities of durability that you talked about, you know, obviously tile been around for a long, long time, and easy to maintain, kind of starts to take care of some of the, you know, harsher chemicals that might be needed and that kind of thing. So, every industry tries to innovate in the tile industry. The innovation has come from digital printing, maybe 10, 15 years ago, that allows us to replicate, natural materials or anything else much better than we used to before. and then pressing. Has changed in the last 10 years too, to allow for larger [00:03:00] sizes and that kind of thing.

And some thinner profiles, which also has some sustainability benefits from using less energy to fire and that kind of thing. So we have lots of opportunities, just like every, industry, to figure out how to do better,

Avi: given that landscape, how did Crossville decide what. Its goal should be, you know, especially when it comes to, uh, carbon emissions. I mean, certainly sustainability in general, but when it comes to carbon footprints, which, you know, became such a topic of conversation about a decade ago, especially when it came to embodied carbon materials and building products.

Uh, so take us back in time. What were those first steps that CrossFit took to decide where to focus?

Noah: The first step probably started in 2013, with the first EPD that we published product EPD, in 2014. that allowed us, you know, like everybody else who takes this step to understand what the baseline is, understand what our product is and, and what is it doing. it probably wasn't until the second EPD in 2019 where we [00:04:00] saw that we could reduce things, you know, through simple steps like just changing motors and things that were, you know, weren't as efficient as they could be.

that there we could make progress. so that's really, you know, and it also allowed us to under understand the impact of the natural gas and electricity. That we have less ability to control. so we, you know, we started to look at what can we control? What can we control now? What can we build on long term?

and that kinda led us to a place of this 30% goal by 2030. You know, for a long time it was a lot of 2050 goals, and I think we all realized that, you know, if we wait till 2050, either we're not gonna do it or it's probably too late. so really the goal just came from what can we do? If we work real hard and not make it too easy to do, because honestly, I'm, you know, more than reducing the carbon emissions.

Internally for me was important to start a conversation about carbon emissions, to get people to understand what they [00:05:00] were, what we were looking for. Could we add an extra column to the spreadsheet of ROI that says, does this do all these things that we want and does it do this too? You know?

So that conversation was the important part. More, more than the goal, obviously.

Avi: and so often that's the case when it comes to carbon assessment. You know, we've done things a certain way for so long, and then the way we do things has evolved, obviously for some advantages. It maybe produces efficient product, it produces, you know, affordable product, you know, whatever it might be.

But once you layer a carbon assessment on it, it kind of makes you think about your processes a little differently. So Everybody who's listening to this podcast has stood on a tile or touched a tile in their life, but not everybody might know how a tile is made. so can you actually maybe take one step back and talk about how tiles are actually made and maybe, you know, where are some of those concerns that you just pointed out?

energy used, things like that.

Noah: alright, so I'm, I'm gonna go more for the porcelain process 'cause that's mainly what we're making, but it's not much [00:06:00] different for some of the others. You know, just raw materials. Porcelain tile is mainly made of three things. feldspar. makes up about 50% of the body. It's a material that naturally occurs in granite and it's extracted from granite, about 30% clay mixtures of different clays to give us low carbon high strength.

and then usually kind of like a, a fill like sand quartz. So 50 30, you know, 20, in those ratios. what's important, since we're taking basically three materials out of the earth, is that we're close to them. that's kind of why we're here in Tennessee and, and access. so what happens is we take these raw materials, we add a whole bunch of water, we grind them into a mix so we can add color if we need to, and then we turn it into a powder.

a little bit more coarse than beach sand. with a moisture content that we can pack into a dye, press really hard, bring it out, dry it out a little bit so it's not, have a lot of water in it, and then put it through a kiln in almost 2200 degrees Fahrenheit. Shrink about 10%. it sounds simple. It's not simple, but that's basically the [00:07:00] process. Take those raw materials, blend them up, press 'em, fire 'em.

Avi: what parts of this process did you realize that there was scope for, say, reducing carbon emissions?

Noah: so the scope three are obviously harder to kind of figure out and, and less ability to touch. So you look at scope one and two and say, okay, where's the opportunity with natural gas and where's the opportunity with electricity? we actually found when we did our last EPD. That TVA who provides us our, energy here in Tennessee is actually better than the National grid mix.

so we actually saw a better reduction in our last EPD when using the, the. Our mix as opposed to the national grid mix. so one of the things we can do is figure out where is TVA a going and how, how quickly are they gonna get green? But in the meantime, and because we've still got natural gas, which you know, has some ideas for things, but they're still a fossil fuel, so you know, it is gonna be what it's gonna be.

the opportunities were to look at are we using that gas as efficiently as possible? You know, are we firing at 55 minutes? Could we fire at 53 minutes? [00:08:00]Do we have a tile that's nine and a half millimeters thick? Could it be nine millimeters thick? Can we recycle more things? So those were the initial kind of, let's go see if we're doing everything as optimal as possible and using these things that we can't get rid of immediately.

Gas and electricity. Using them in the best optimal way. And I think we still have some strides that we can make before we hit the wall of now it's up to other folks.

Avi: you mentioned recycling and I'll just quickly note here that crosswalk was an absolute pioneer in like, you know, being able to recycle tile. But before I get on that track, I wanna stay with carbon just a little longer. So, The amazing thing is, of course, you, you know, you created all this assessment and so on and that's great.

You have EPD so people can see what the carbon footprint of your product is, but you also offer a few collections of carbon neutral tile. so tell me a little bit about at least the two newest ones, you know, billion and and Arjun 2.0. and, How you get to, you know, this carbon

[00:09:00] neutrality.

Noah: So probably the first thing that may not be apparent, because I don't know why it would be, is that there's nothing different about those two collections than the other collections that we make. those four collections that we call carbon neutral, aren't manufactured necessarily any differently than any other collections.

Those were collections that we decided to take to the market and say, Hey, you guys were asking us for carbon neutral for zero products. We can't provide you zero products today where we don't have the technology to get there. But here's what we can do and let's start to have a conversation. so it's been really interesting in the two years since we started to do it, because I think at the time when we started, I thought we were ahead of the curve.

And then I sort of felt like we were at the curve and now I'm, now I'm really not sure where we are exactly. Because I think the architects and designers are still trying to figure out how to put whole building lifecycle carbon calculation [00:10:00] in. So what is my zero Get them if they don't know how to use it yet.

So it starts a conversation. You know, it, it, it pushes it forward. It shows people hopefully that we're trying to do something. but the actual use of it yet, I'm still kind of wrapping my heads around. I, I got a carbon neutral EPD, you know, finalized, two months ago, but we haven't kind of released it yet because I don't know if people understand how to talk about it, Because in my mind, if we can't get rid of the gas and the electricity or the gas is spec specifically, if we can't get rid of it today, and you need a product that's carbon neutral, my only. Available path is to lower my carbon as quickly as possible and offset in the interim. So to me, it's buying into the problem, but I think a lot of people have the perception that it's buying out of the problem, and we have to make sure that we have this conversation that says it's buying in.

If you're coupling with reduction at the same time.

Avi: I think that's a really interesting conundrum. And, [00:11:00] you know, tile is not the, of course, the only category where this has made a difference or is, you know, uh, where it's, it's kind of confusing. And I'll just, I'll just lay out a little bit for our listeners, you know. Basically the theory is, you know, that say a building is made of, you know, 200 or 300 different materials or products, and that if we collected data on every single one of those, we would be able to say what the embodied carbon of the building is.

And then the second piece. Right. Exactly. And the second piece is that if at least some of those. Materials were as close to zero carbon emissions, or, which, by the way, I'll say again, doesn't exist in nature. No such thing exists. That's a construct we came up with. But if they're as low in carbon emissions or they're carbon sequestering in some way, or you know, some we've, we've, you know, managed to work with that carbon number in some way.

Then overall the Embodied Carpenter building comes down. So that's the theory. Unfortunately, what happens is, you know, because. Buildings go through very interesting [00:12:00] lives. And so there's a lot of disagreement about how we count those numbers, how we compare different products. There's also disagreement about, of course, as Noah said, you know, whether we acknowledge offsets or not, but you know.

Ultimately, I think the most interesting thing you said, Noah, is that, you know, these collections are not any different. They just have this additional investment in carbon offsets and if you don't care about that, you don't care about that and you don't take that into consideration your numbers, you know?

And if you care about it, you care about it. I mean, it's just interesting. I think it really depends, it really puts the ball is in the court of people who are doing the lifecycle assessment of buildings at the moment to figure out, you know, how, how much of this matter. And how, which numbers do they want to use effectively because the product is the same.

Noah: Yeah, they're just choosing for one reason or another, we did a, a carbon neutral or like a, a carbon reduction. Carbon neutral CEU. and it was really interesting to go and give those to a lot of the big [00:13:00] architecture firms and kind of have this conversation. And I think for the first year I did it pretty, you know, every time the same kind of thing.

After a year, I, I started to not get the responses that I was hoping to, to this discussion at these firms that were the ones that were pushing this, In the narrative in the market. so I started to say some simple things at the end of the CEU that were kind of like, Hey, I need to know if you guys are gonna buy this product because it's carbon neutral or because it's pretty, because if you're just, if, if carbon neutral means nothing to you, I'd rather take my money and go do carbon reduction in the factory.

It's better for all of us. So, and it wasn't to say we're not in. I'm happy to be in both ways. If they buy more tile because it's carbon neutral, then I've got more money to go do carbon reduction. You know, it's the circle that I wanna create, but I did wanna start putting out there that you guys asked for something, we're giving it to you, and you don't seem to be taking it at the uptake that it takes for us to make momentum.

And that's a conversation we need to have.

Avi: [00:14:00] tile is not a material that's known for being easily recyclable and yet possible, you know, you created this program. Tell me about it. Tell me why it was important, what it achieves at the moment.

Noah: so when the factory started in the early eighties, they had started to do some things like, uh, made this process to recycle all the water in the factory. And they had started a lot of those processes. So there were processes to try and capture all of the unfired tile. That was either quality checked or didn't make it through the process.

But then the question was, here's this last piece. There's the, there's the fired pieces that are landfill or even out in the market. what do we do with them? So at that point, we weren't owned by a HF, we were still part of the current family. And the current family had some connections with a mining company, who was actually able to find a mining piece of machinery that was, uh, durable enough, to break fired tile, uh, and to break it down into something small enough that we could, reuse it. So [00:15:00] there's a few manufacturers doing it now and some other ones using, some glass and some things like that. but that was kind of the main impotence. And then there's this strange story about this federal building. in Illinois.

We'll just leave it at that. but this building supposedly before my time, was asking if we could take the tile out of the building, recycle it and send it back. We said yes, and that ended up with a sec second question that said, well, can you take all of the toilets and sinks too? And we were like, okay, maybe we haven't done that before.

But then the last request came and we want those things recycled and put into the actual tile. That's gonna go back into the actual building, which you can imagine if you've ever been in a manufacturing facility. Incredibly difficult to move that material and segregate it. And so it was a horrible experience.

We did it. We lost money, I'm sure. but it brought us to this place of being able to do something that we couldn't before. And that brought us to the partnership with Toto of recycling, unfired toilets that were coming out of their Maura Georgia plant. and finding these [00:16:00] resources that we could use that weren't, virgin raw materials.

Avi: There's a lot to love about this, this story.

Noah: Yeah, it's a good story. We, we, we haven't because we're, because we the fired tile, we've increased our recycling percentage. Now we were at four and 10, depending on the product. Now we're at 10 and 15. so we had started to get a lot of the, recycled material from Toto built up, and we paused that for a while.

But now, because we've increased our percentages, we're looking at, you know, do we try and turn that tab back on? Or do we turn, but you know, now we're having a conversation about. Take back programs and, you know, I've got all these questions that probably it's my responsibility to answer, but I don't know if it's better for us to take a, a pile of dirt from a mile for here or if to put toilets on a truck from Atlanta 150 miles away and it's carbon footprint to come here.

It, it's a, it's an intelligent conversation that we should have.

Avi: I, you know, I love that you bring that up because that's exactly where it was, kind of where I was going because you know, you take this, you take this building [00:17:00] material that's made to last, you know, maybe hundreds of years unless you take a sledgehammer to it. And then you invest in this very specialized equipment to actually break it down to make a durable product.

Again, when I think the design community should also be asking how can this durable product actually endure,

Noah: Right.

Avi: you know?

Noah: Which should be the only important thing you know, and, and maybe let us look at the inputs and make sure that they're accomplishing

Avi: great. I mean, pre-industrial, you know, like manufacturing waste. Even cross industry totals, waste, all of that makes so much sense. But to take actual finished tile and say let's turn it back into tile, uh, I mean, we need to do it because we are at present. I mean, construction demolition waste is a third of all our municipal solid waste.

Clearly we need to deal with that as a problem,

Noah: it needs to be put on the table and everything looked at, with a, a new lens as opposed to the old lens that just said, give us some recycled content.

Avi: this is why I [00:18:00] love this conversation about Tayo, because you take this Commonsensically great product and now we're asking questions and trying to make it behave like we, the same way that we want to deal with, say, plastic products or you know, other materials.

And it's not true to that material. so let's use that as a jumping off point in addition to carbon footprint. Right. What are some, like you mentioned straight off the bat, you know, durability and low maintenance. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because like, you know, as tile, uh, you know, it's, it's chemically inert.

low to no concerns about, you know, toxicity once it's installed, things like that. Can you talk just. And you made it for us some of the other advantages of tile that maybe for you, you take granted, but I'd love our listeners to hear.

Noah: I think especially since some of the stuff we talked about earlier, the innovations of the panels and size, you know, a lot of the concern, interestingly enough was with, I'd hate grout joints, although now we see small sizes coming back as a trend. So, you know, bell bottoms come back around, but, That innovation of, you know, because, [00:19:00] because we're not just taking natural stone, I kind of see tile as a, we're doing what Mother Nature did, we're just speeding up the process because at the end of the day, we're just taking natural things, heat and pressure, and doing something to it. As opposed to natural stone, which we can polish or flame or something, we can provide a lot of structure, we can provide a lot of aesthetic.

So I think it becomes more, of an architectural material that can provide a lot of, you know, not only positive durability properties and characteristics, but design appeal in, in a way that it hasn't before. And it's probably something we should talk about more, you know, because I think people, you said in the beginning that, you know.

Tile hasn't always been seen as sustainable. It's been this product that's just been there forever. And I don't think people have appreciated it for things, and especially when sustainability rules started getting written, you know, 20 years ago, carpet and vinyl and those other guys were at the table a lot faster than tile was.

We just sat back for a long time and said, well, we're already sustainable. We found out that the table's important to sit at no matter what.[00:20:00]

Avi: I love that. You know, and I think we should be seriously thinking about tile as an option, as a viable option alongside, you know, some of these other flooring products which a HF makes. So now you have, you know, those are sister brands. but How do you fit the product to the application?

So if you're looking at a, at a building that's likely to have a long life, you know, and you are designing it with that endurance in mind, then tile might be a better choice than maybe some other building, some other flooring solutions or even wall solutions, in certain spaces.

Noah: I mean, that's, that's been the super interesting question when you go out, you know, because maybe not all your listeners, you know, understand the EPDs and the product category rules and the 75 year life that we're supposed to give as an operational of the building. Because when you go out and you start talking about these things, you get into this conversation, or we rep, we rip out every seven years, or we, we change finishes every three.

so that is the interesting conversation of are we gonna keep doing what we did? [00:21:00] Or do we need to think about it? Maybe tile's not the problem. You know, I don't think we have enough of a scope of knowledge yet, or at least I don't to understand if the drapes or the chair or the TV or the tile is the one that I should be more concerned about on an overturning basis, you know?

But maybe there's a place where. You know, I don't wanna just make gray and beige tile, but there's for sure a aesthetic that could have everything else replaced around it and it could maintain, you know, if, if we don't wanna think about, you know, ripping out tide. 'cause I think that's sometimes why we use less durable materials is 'cause we're thinking we gotta take them out sooner and that's harder.

But maybe we need to start designing differently and thinking of tile that could live through a couple of iterations of design, that might be a good way to address the footprint.

Avi: Absolutely. This is what I love about, you know, the built environment, is that we actually have levers at every single scale, so, you know, yes. Product manufacturing, which is like, you know, maybe the smallest unit of activity within our industry. Uh, or rather, let's say the [00:22:00] inner, you know, the, the, the core activity.

you can do a lot there. So, which you have done right. Aiming to reduce by 30% your carbon footprint, investing in recycling, you know, doing all this stuff. And I think we may need to get products to be as good as they can be. For their inherent material qualities. And then we ask, how can we then use this good product in the best way possible?

Then how can we, you know, take those product assemblies and deploy them in buildings the best way possible? Then how do we think about those, you know, structural systems like maintenance systems or renovations systems that we're currently a part of, and how do we change those cycles? So there's a, you know, a level of scale of thinking that you're, that you're

Noah: A conversation that has to happen. I, I listened to your last podcast. I, I really took to heart the whole, we need to sit down and have a conversation about what's important for the products that go in your application so we can make sure we're giving you the right properties. And they may not be the same every time, so, you know.

Yeah.

Avi: right. Absolutely. Well, I'm gonna ask you a tough question here, [00:23:00] Noah, but given all this uncertainty, given that it's very subjective, so I get all that, but is, is there something that you wish. Would change for the better in that broader system, not at crosswalk. Which, you know, you've been stewarding that for a long time and that's, you know, you're doing the work and you've laid out to us how you do the work.

But you know, in the broader sense of, you know, how materials are applied or how materials you're used, is there something you wish we would get better at? overall?

Noah: I mean, I, I see us trying, you know, a as, as a, as a, as a group collective. I see us trying, you know, with AI material pledge, with common materials framework. I think if I had a, if I had a magic wand and a wish, it would be for us to get to a place of consistency. Because if we can all start driving the same car to the same destination, we will get there faster.

But if we don't start asking the questions in the same way, I mean, you've seen it. How many? I get a [00:24:00] million forms. That asked me the same six questions in a million different ways. If we could ask the question similarly, every time I could train my salespeople to ask the, answer, the questions much better, and we, we could just get there faster.

So that, that would be the wand is to get where we, I know we all want to get, which is some clarity, some consistency, some, you know, some, here's what we need to do.

Avi: Absolutely. We all need to work towards that aligned, ask, you know, off, off product manufacturers but, you know, make sure that that system, whatever it is, has some room for the kind of specificity right, that we need as well.

Noah: Yes. We have seen that too, right? The, the umbrella put on top of everything and then we're, and then we're rushing to figure out, well, how does that not fit into this thing that we did for everything? Yeah.

Avi: Right, right. So, you know, we're like, okay, everything should have an EPD and everything should be carbon neutral. And it's like, well, maybe some things don't need to do that and maybe we don't.

Noah: Probably not gonna get there tomorrow.

Avi: Yeah, exactly. Or maybe we ask for that when we [00:25:00] know what to do with the data. As you were talking earlier,

Noah: Well, because that's, that's the other thing that's scary. If you, if you ask for it before you know what to do with it and the time lag goes too much time between the time we're giving it to you, it doesn't make us feel good that we need to keep doing it.

Avi: Yeah, and the information may not be, valid, relevant, or true anymore. Um, and so we run that risk as well. it's so interesting talking to you always, Noah. 'cause like, you know, tile is, as you said, you broke it down for us. It's quite a simple product at the end of the day in, you know, in what it's made of.

and yet it kind of points out to us the broader systemic problems we have in the building industry because. There's not really anything bad that we can point to with tile except maybe the energy used to make it. you know, but they're benign materials, you know, with, in a durable product that's relatively in our, you know, and so it becomes a place for us to talk about some of these, you know, broader issues and I'm so glad to be able to do that with you today.

Thank you for this time.

Noah: Very welcome.

Avi: And thank you, all of you for joining us. And of course, uh, for [00:26:00]anybody listening, um, if you want to know more about Tyler, as I said, Noah and the team at Crossroad at a HF are some of the best folks to talk to. So, you know, feel free to reach out to them, go to Crossroad's website.

There's, we'll put a link in our show notes. So thank you so much for, for your insights and for your questions, Noah. I really appreciate it.

Noah: Hey, thank you so much for the opportunity, Avi.

Avi: Deep Green is produced by the Surround Podcast Network. Today's episode is presented in partnership with a HF. It was produced and edited by Rob Schulte, with support from Rachel Santor and Lauren Wilker. We're talking to the biggest experts in sustainable architecture and design all this season, so catch the next episode of Deep Green in just a few weeks, wherever you get your podcast.