Life Cycle Assessment of an adhesive for the laying of ceramic tiles

The building sector is still largely dominated by recourse to natural resources with growing consumes: the necessary request of natural aggregates generate a strong impact on the territory because of extractive activities. The growing attention and interest towards the environment led to a wider interest in reusing and recycling building materials. Consequently it is necessary to pay attention on the contribution that the secondary aggregates may lead to the satisfaction of the building society needs. For this reason it is necessary evaluate the environmental bounders associated to the necessary industrial operation to obtain the secondary raw materials, with respect the natural aggregates, obtained from extractive activities. To investigate the environmental performance of both secondary raw materials and natural aggregates it is important to adopt the life cycle approach. A product is usually defined as eco-friendly when it is solely composed by recycled materials, since the consumption of raw materials and the production of waste are limited. However, in this way, it cannot taken into account of the energy consumption during the reprocessing, that often reduces the advantage of the raw material savings.