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22. 12. 2011 ASEKOL is a partner of Italian scheme Glass Plus
Glass Plus offers a practical solution as to how to re-use glass salvaged through the treatment of old-style cathode ray tube (CRT) television sets. As a recycling strategy it is revolutionary: glass from the screens of old-technology TVs is added to an innovative ceramic-making mixture used for making porcelainized grés. These products, which are extraordinary for their technical and aesthetic quality, also offer designers the opportunity to acquire credits awarded for ěrecycled materialî content under LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the US buildings rating system.
Glass Plus is the concrete demonstration that frontline national industries – electronics, recycling, and ceramics – can cooperate to create value through making innovative and eco-sustainable products. The project takes its cue from a European-wide analysis showing that the market for CRTtechnology TVs is being forced into decline by the boom in LCD and plasma TVs. This renewal by users of their TV sets is generating an increase in the corresponding waste, which is expected to peak in 2013. The main waste element of a CRT TV is made up of glass, which accounts for almost 50% of its total weight.
The project is the result of cooperation between the following partners:
• Consorzio Remedia, Italy’s main Collective Compliance Scheme in the eco-sustainable handling of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), with operations that deal also with waste batteries and accumulators.
• Meta, a leading supplier of atomised ceramic-making mixture.
• Relight, a WEEE treatment plant in Northern Italy that specialises in the treatment of CRT
TVs and monitors.
• Vallone, a WEEE treatment plant in Central Italy that specialises in the treatment of CRT TVs and monitors.
• Ceramiche Refin, an international leader in the production of ceramic tiling.
• Asekol, a collective compliance scheme in the Czech Republic.
Clearly, there is a need for a solution that enables the reuse of glass sourced from TV-waste treatment and is ecologically and economically sustainable: Glass Plus answers that need with a project that yields unrivalled environmental and economic benefits for all the operators along the process chain. Glass Plus shall be developed over a three-year period. ReMedia handles the despatch of TV sets to its partner plants specialised in treating and recovering secondary raw materials for fresh use in industrial processing. Indeed, Project GLASS PLUS uses the glass output by the partner plants in the project to produce LEED ceramics using an innovative mixture that contains up to 20% of CRT screen glass, the highest percentage use of post-consumer recycled material achieved to date internationally. The importance of the project may be judged from the fact that an apartment of 70 sq m furnished with LEED ceramics uses 30 average-sized television sets, corresponding to 300 kg of recycled glass.
You can see Glass Plus project poster HERE.
You can see Glass Plus project brochure HERE.