Recycled Ceramic Tile Manufacturer Joins LinkUp in King County

King County, WA - Quarry Tile Company, manufacturer of Eco-Tile, a ceramic tile made of approximately 70 percent recycled materials, has joined the LinkUp program in King County, Washington.

Eco-Tile is produced using a combination of recycled glass, recycled grinding paste from the computer industry and recycled soil/rock waste from the sand and gravel industry. Eco-Tile also contains reprocessed glaze waste from Quarry Tile Company's other manufacturing operations.

Quarry Tile, from Spokane, Washington, was selected as a LinkUp partner for several reasons. One is the company's use of mixed-colored glass cullet, designated a priority material for increased recycling by King County's Solid Waste Division. The glass cullet is supplied by the TriVitro Corporation, Kent, Washington.

TriVitro is another participant in LinkUp and manufactures recycled tumbled glass pebbles for home décor and hobbyist use was well as recycled-glass grit used for blasting abrasive. After crushing the glass for its own products, TriVitro collects the dust and finely ground particles and sends it to Quarry Tile. Previously, the glass dust was disposed of in a landfill.

The partnership is a win-win situation for both companies and for King County. The scrap material from Tri-Vitro makes up about 25 percent of the recycled content used in Eco-Tile, and its use saves TriVitro more than $20,000 a year in disposal costs. The county benefits through increased demand for recycled glass generated and collected locally.

LinkUp was launched two years ago to encourage manufacturers to incorporate more recycled materials into their products. The program, sponsored by the King County Solid Waste Division, offers free, customized technical and promotional support to eligible businesses.

All of the recycled materials used in Eco-Tile come from within a 350 mile radius of Quarry Tile's manufacturing plant in Spokane. In addition to the mixed-glass cullet, the grinding paste used to make Eco-Tile is a manufacturing by-product from a computer CD manufacturer in Portland, Oregon, and the soil and rock waste comes from Central Pre-Mix, a Spokane-area concrete manufacturer. In the past, the company had been using clay, some of it trucked in from 2,300 miles away.