Below you will find a few highlights of our extensive green efforts.
EcoPremier, our groundbreaking new line of architectural products made with recycled porcelain, provides a new and beautiful alternative for achieving your project’s environmental goals. EcoPremier products feature up to 43 percent recycled content by weight – porcelain that would otherwise be deposited in landfills – and provide credits toward your project’s LEED certification. The porcelain can be used in all of our concrete products.
Our recycled glass composites offer another beautiful green alternative. Using a unique formula, 100 percent recycled glass can be used in any of Wausau Tile’s concrete- and epoxy-based products – from stunning glass tiles to outdoor planters, from countertops to pavers. Annually, we use over 1 million pounds of recycled glass aggregate in our products.
We also use recycled metals for our metal site furnishings, recycled plastic for trash receptacle liners and recycled rubber for our Terra-Tabs and Terra-Shims, which are used with our roof deck pedestal systems. What’s more: We cut down our cement usage in concrete pavers and terrazzo tile by incorporating fly ash, and we use a specially formulated finish on our roof deck pavers and concrete benches that allows for an SRI (solar reflectance index) of over 79. And our unique reservoir system can be used with concrete planters to cut down on water consumption.
We avoid sending millions of pounds of waste to landfills each year through innovative processes that reuse excess materials that would otherwise be considered waste – including plastic, cardboard, paper, aluminum, packaging foam, wood pallets and more.
Our cutting-edge water recycling system allows us to use recycled water in all phases of our manufacturing process. In fact, we use each gallon of water eight times on average, allowing us to recycle tens of millions of gallons of water each year. And filter presses in our sophisticated water-filtration system reduce particles in wastewater when we manufacture concrete products.
We’ve also significantly increased the efficiency of our natural gas consumption by upgrading our plastic mold oven to use the latest technology, and we’ve installed a high-efficiency, energy-saving lighting system throughout our massive manufacturing facility.
Our commitment to energy efficiency and state-of-the-art systems is unwavering: We keep close monthly tabs on each pound of material that passes through our manufacturing processes in an effort to identify new ways to recycle byproducts and continually improve efficiency.
We believe in supporting indigenous resources and actively seek local and regional materials whenever possible to reduce the environmental strain of transportation. Projects located within a 500 mile radius of Wausau Tile's manufacturing facility and using locally extracted materials may be eligible to receive LEED MR Credit 5.