UNCORRECTED PROOF 1 2 cascade approach on recycling for marble and granite product design 3 Aguinaldo dos Santos a, * , Claudio Pereira Sampaio a , Carlo Vezzoli b 4 a Federal University of Paraná, Sustainable Design Research Center, Brazil 5 b Politecnico di Milano, Design and System Innovation for sustainability, Italy 6 8 article info 9 Article history: 10 Received 31 August 2007 11 Accepted 30 April 2008 12 Available online xxxx 13 Keywords: 14 Natural materials 15 Reutilization 16 Cascade approach 17 18 abstract 19 The present article presents the main results of a research project that aimed to establish guidelines on 20 sustainable design for marble and granite products, a non-renewable material. The study was carried out 21 within an association of 13 small and medium companies in Brazil. During the investigation it was 22 identified a significant lack of literature on these materials which could support the design process, 23 particularly regarding the issue of recycling. The study has unveiled the potential of applying in this 24 sector the ‘‘cascade approach for recycling” where it is anticipated destinations to all possible wastage 25 for the entire life cycle of a given product. 26 Ó 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 27 28 29 1. Introduction 30 This case study was originally set to provide design support to 31 13 Brazilian small and medium companies specialized on manu- 32 facturing marble and granite products. It was carried out in the 33 State of Paraná, the 4th largest granite producer in Brazil, with a 34 6% share of the national production. 35 Marble and Granite products have received relatively little 36 attention of the design research community despite its great eco- 37 nomical, social and environmental impacts. It is estimated that 38 the total economic impact of the business around this material 39 within countries is worth around US$ 18 billion. The export busi- 40 ness of finished products based on marble and granite generates 41 around US$ 12 billions/year along with US$ 10 billion/year gener- 42 ated from the machine production other complementary products/ 43 services. Currently the world market in this sector represents 65 44 million tons per year from which 80% of the finished products 45 are tiles for walls and floors, 15% are funeral pieces and 5% general 46 products [1]. 47 Brazil has around 500 different types of commercial stones, 48 including granites, marbles and quartz, distributed throughout 49 1300 quarries. The national production includes 60% of granite 50 stones and 20% of marble and travertine. The country produces 51 1.4% of the world total volume of processed stones and occupies 52 the 6th position in terms of export volume [3]. In 2004 the highest 53 flow of Brazilian export stone products were directed to the USA 54 with 71% of the total monetary value [2]. 55 The majority of marble and granite companies in Brazil that 56 produces finished products present a deficient and out-of-date 57 manufacturing infrastructure when compared to Italian or Chinese 58 competitors. Most of these companies are family owned and tend 59 to focus their activities solely on the local market which usually 60 demands a limited range of products. This situation along with 61 the almost total absence of design professionals working on the 62 product development process on this sector results on products 63 with poor value added. 64 In this context, the Design and Sustainability Research Center at 65 Paraná Federal University, in partnership with the Marble and 66 Granite Manufacturers Association, set a one year long research 67 project with the aim of disseminating a new paradigm on product 68 development on this sector. Since natural stone is a non-renewable 69 material the focus of researchers was on generating design con- 70 cepts that contemplate creative solutions for the waste generated 71 during the production process and, also, enabled an extension of 72 product and material life cycle. The focus was the generation of 73 solutions for the production waste integrated on the solution of 74 the main product, which is named here ‘‘cascade approach for 75 recycling”. 76 2. Life cycle design: expanding the life of marble and granite 77 A key issue when thinking on developing solutions for waste of 78 any industrial sector is to understand the life cycle of each mate- 79 rial. Nowadays there are a large number of new methods for envi- 80 ronmental impact assessment of products which enable a full 81 assessment of the input and output between the technosphere 82 and the geosphere or biosphere. However, there is little data to sup- 83 port any study on marble and granite and even fewer data consid- 84 ering its life cycle which leaves the focus of designers mostly on 0261-3069/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2008.04.068 * Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +55 41 3360 5313. Q3 E-mail addresses: asantos@ufpr.br (A. dos Santos), nds@ufpr.br (C.P. Sampaio), carlo.vezzoli@polimi.it (C. Vezzoli). URLs: http://www.design.ufpr.br/nucleo (A. dos Santos), http://www.design. ufpr.br/nucleo (C.P. Sampaio), http://www.polimi.it (C. Vezzoli). Materials and Design xxx (2008) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Materials and Design journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes JMAD 1861 No. of Pages 5, Model 5G 24 May 2008 Disk Used ARTICLE IN PRESS Please cite this article in press as: Santos A dos et al., cascade approach on recycling for marble and granite product design, J Mater Design (2008), doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2008.04.068