Abstract
An environmental assessment of ornamental ceramics plates was conducted to evaluate the possible improvement solutions. The study was developed following the standards ISO 14040 – 14044 (2006), choosing as functional unit 1 kg of plates and with the system boundaries being the phases: production of the plates, end of life of the plates, and transport of the used plates to the landfill for disposal at the end of their life. Collected data were processed using Simapro 7.0 (Impact 2002+ method). The study results show that the most environmental impacts are due to the production phase. Most environmental impact damages are from the category “Climate Change”. The most significant impact categories for the environmental assessment are: Global Warming (GW); Respiratory Inorganics (RI) and Non-Renewable Energy (NRE) use. Efforts to reduce the environmental impacts should concentrate on the use of renewable energy or on the possible use of recycled raw materials to improve environmental performance.