Contrary to popular belief, you can’t just put old ceramic tiles in your trash can. In most towns and cities, ceramic tiles are considered construction waste, and throwing them into your standard trash is illegal.
You can throw a couple of ceramic tiles in the trash without worrying. Once you get more than that, you should either sell them, reuse them or bring them to a recycling center that accepts them!
This applies whether you are a business user or not. Thankfully, it still shouldn’t be that tricky to get rid of your old ceramic tiles. This page will explain exactly how you can go about that!
How Do You Dispose of Ceramic Tiles?
Nobody will be too fussed if you take a couple of ceramic tiles out and place them into your normal trash can. A broken tile or so isn’t going to be a major issue.
When you throw away a lot of tiles, you will run into issues. Those tiles will be filling up landfills (never a good thing), and the garbage men will not be happy about carrying a ton of heavy tiles.
As we said, you do have options available to you.
If you are a consumer, you can go to your normal dump or at least some household waste center. They will almost certainly have a section where you can dump your construction materials. This is where you will be putting your ceramic tiles.
You may need to go to a waste disposal center focused on businesses if you are a business user. This will be dependent on where you live, though. Most dumps do not want business people hauling all of their trash there. It causes issues because the trash center will become overloaded with trash.
Of course, if you want, you could donate or sell your tiles in both cases. This is assuming that they are in fairly decent condition.
In almost all cases, finding a buyer shouldn’t be that difficult. People are always on the lookout for affordable ceramic tiles. This will require a little bit of extra effort on your part, but at least you know that the tiles will be put to good use.
What Happens to Ceramic Tiles When You Dispose Of Them?
It would be best not to put ceramic tiles in your normal trash because you do not want them to end up in a landfill. Now, ceramic tiles haven’t polluted the environment like most other items.
This is a good thing. However, for this planet’s benefit, we really need to cut back on the amount sent to landfills.
They are filling up quickly, and it is destroying the areas that we live in. Sure, a couple of tiles wouldn’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. However, imagine if everybody started to throw away their ceramic tiles in the normal trash. The landfills would be overloaded with something that could probably be reused.
So, what happens when the tiles are sent to a waste disposal center? Well, it is going to be dependent on the condition of the tiles, as well as their quality of them. One of two things could happen.
If the tiles are complete and in good condition
If the tiles are not in bad shape, then the waste disposal center will clean them up. They will then be sold to people who want to use them in construction projects. You will be surprised how many construction workers pick up old ceramic tiles from waste disposal centers. As long as they are in good condition, then they won’t be particularly fussed.
Many people who do arts and crafts can pick up some slightly damaged tiles too. For example, some people will make mosaics with decent ceramic tiles. This means it doesn’t matter to them whether there is a crack or two.
Seriously damaged or unclean tiles
If the ceramic tiles can’t be sold, they will be crushed into small little ceramic stones and sometimes a powder. This crushed ceramic has a lot of major benefits to it.
For starters, crushed ceramic can often be a base for a driveway. The ceramic and other smaller stones will allow water to drain a little bit easier from the driveway. This, in turn, will extend the driveway’s lifespan.
In other cases, the crushed ceramic will be used in filtration devices. This is because ceramic is brilliant at filtering out impurities in water and other liquids. Again, the ceramic will often be used alongside other stones.
Waste disposal centers will always recycle ceramic tiles somehow. They are one of the easiest recycled products as they do not need much preparation. So you never have to worry about them ending up in a landfill.
Why Recycle Ceramic Tiles?
As we said before, you never want ceramic tiles to end up in a landfill. Anything that can be reused should never be in a landfill. However, there are other environmental concerns on top of this.
There is a massive demand for ceramic. It can be used in a variety of different projects. Producing new ceramics, particularly tiles, is incredibly hard on the environment. The whole process is very polluting.
When you recycle tiles, you will be reducing the demand in the tile production industry. This means less pollution and a better planet for all of us. While we will probably never be at the point where the entire world can live on recycled ceramic tiles, it would be great if as many tiles as possible were recycled.
Conclusion
Disposing of old ceramic tiles can be tricky as they are considered construction waste, and throwing them into your standard trash is illegal. However, options are available, such as bringing them to a recycling center, donating or selling them, or taking them to a construction materials section of your local dump or household waste center.
It’s important to note that ceramic tiles should not be thrown into landfills as they can be reused and recycled for other purposes, such as constructing driveways or filtration devices. We must take the necessary steps to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills and use resources that can be reused.
