Global Ceramic Tiles Market Analysis

The recent report published by TMRR on the global Ceramic Tiles market is an in-depth analysis of the overall prospects of the Ceramic Tiles market in the upcoming years. The data collected from credible primary and secondary sources is accurately represented in the report backed up by relevant figures, graphs, and tables. The report includes a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the various aspects of the market by collecting data from the key participants in the Ceramic Tiles market value chain.

The report reveals that the global Ceramic Tiles market is set to grow at a CAGR of ~XX% over the forecast period (2019-2029) and surpass the value of ~US$XX by the end of 2029. The presented study also includes a thorough analysis of the micro and macroeconomic factors, regulatory framework, and current trends that are expected to influence the growth of the Ceramic Tiles market during the assessment period.

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Ceramic Tiles Market Segmentation

The market study put forward by TMRR segments the global Ceramic Tiles market to offer a microscopic understanding of the various aspects of the Ceramic Tiles market. The Ceramic Tiles market is segmented on the basis of region, product type, end-user, and more.

The study offers a Y-o-Y growth projection of each market segment and sub-segment over the stipulated timeframe of the study.

Key Trends

The thriving construction industry, especially across emerging economies in regions such as Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa is the foremost factor driving the steady demand for ceramic tiles in the global market. Robust economic development of developing economies, rising disposable incomes, and the increased power of spending that comes with it are also driving the increased uptake of ceramic tiles as renovation projects take an upswing. Rising consciousness regarding the aesthetic appeal of residential as well as commercial buildings is driving the demand for ceramic tiles for beautification purposes as well.

Global Ceramic Tiles Market: Market Potential

The large amount of energy required to produce ceramic materials via the conventional kiln firing method has for a long time stirred research activities focused at the development of an effective way to produce ceramic materials under low energy conditions. Recently, a new room-temperature method has been introduced, which has demonstrated much more energy efficiency as compared to the kiln firing method. The method, which is being called cold sintering, can also enable the production of composite materials.

The carbonate nanoparticles used to run the procedure can be captured from waste gases from the industrial sector or from the atmosphere. In this method, the captured CO2 reacts with a suitable raw material to produce carbonate, which could be used to produce ceramics at room temperature. Through this method, the environment-damaging CO2 gas would get stored in ceramic products for a long time. This potential CO2 sink is expected to help end-use applications such as across thermal power stations to work on a carbon-neutral basis.

Global Ceramic Tiles Market: Regional Analysis

Of the key regional markets for ceramic tiles, the market in Asia Pacific takes the top spot in terms of consumption and contribution of revenue to the global market. High pace of urbanization and the consequent rise in new construction projects, especially across emerging economies in the region, is the key factor leading to the massive demand for ceramic tiles in the past few years in the region. The construction industry in the region continues to embark upon a steady growth path and is expected to continue to lead to the excellent demand for ceramic tiles in the next few years as well.

Global Ceramic Tiles Market: Competitive Overview

The global market for ceramic tiles features an extremely fragmented and competitive vendor landscape, with no vendor accounting for a significant majority share. Rising volatility of raw material costs is also contributing in intensifying the competition in the market and trends are expected to remain strong over the next few years owing to several restrictions on mining practices. Nevertheless, with innovative and economical products in their arsenal and the help of proper supply networks could help companies tap lucrative growth opportunities in the market.

Some of the leading companies operating in the global ceramic tiles market are Grupo Lamosa SAB de CV, Ras Al Khaimah Ceramics, Siam Cement Group, Kajaria Ceramics, Mohawk Industries Inc., China Ceramics Co., Ltd., and Ceramiche Atlas Concorde S.P.A, Crossville Inc., Florida Tile Inc., Porcelanosa Grupo, Saloni Ceramica, and Gruppo Ceramiche Ricchetti S.p.A.

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Ceramic Tiles Market Assessment and Forecast Report by 2017 - 2025 - The Market Expedition

The flagship implementation, dubbed IMG AXT-64-2048, is rated at 2Tflop/s for computation, 64Gpixel/s for graphics processing and 8Tops for artificial intelligence processing.

IMG A-Series delivers improvement at the same clock speed and process compared with current PowerVR devices shipping, claims the firm, offering 2.5x the performance, 8x faster machine learning processing and 60% lower power.Itis the fastest GPU intellectual property ever released, said Imagination, listing: automotive, IoT artificial intelligence, digital TV, set-top box, over-the-top, phones and servers amongst potential applications.

Geometry processing in maximum configuration A-Series GPU (left)

The 2.5x performance increase is in computational speed/mm2 compared with a recent Series 9 core, running the computation-heavy Manhatten benchmark, PowerVR product director Kristof Beets told Electronics Weekly.

In the language used to compare CPU cores, according to Beets, Imaginations earlier GPU cores were like CISC (complex instruction set) CPUs, whereasthe new A-Series GPU are RISC-like in nature with a reduced instruction set and therefore simpler hardware.

GPUs traditionally had complex ALUs [arithmetic logic units] like CISC compared with RISC. If you simplify theinstruction set, you get higher hardware utilisation, he explained.

WithCISC, the onus is on the compiler to keep hardware filled with work. With a RISC-ish architecture in the A-Series, and having gone ultra-wide as well A-Series has 128 ALUs operating in parallel A-Series is much easier for compilation, said Beets.

With all those busses in parallel, wont any silicon need an awful lot of metal layers?

No, said Beet: Actually, congestion is much better in this [A-Series] design as everything much more regular. The older GPUs have fewer ALUs, but a lot of multiplexers.

A-Series ALU

For comparison, the earlier (Rogue) ALU

As well as 128 ALUs, there are 32 of what Beets calls more-than-ALUs (diagram right), which are far more capable than the simple versions, and are intended forsine, cos, log calculations and atomic operations, amongst other functions. Both pipelines can be used at the same time.

Looking at the maximum configuration (AXT-64-2048, diagram left), there are four identical blocks dubbed scaleable processing units (SPUs).

Within each of these SPUs is a square representing 128 32bit ALUs, each of which can perform multiply and add simultaneously, giving 256flop.

Looking closely, there is another square behind that per SPU a second set of ALUs, pushing capacity to 512flop in parallel.

Configurations are available with one, two, three or four of these dual ALU SPUs. In the pictured maximum configuration, there are four, taking its capacity to 2,048 simultaneous 32bit floating point operations to which can be added the capacity of the associated more-than-ALUs.

Pixel process flow in A-Series rendering the gold surface (top right) over the geometry tile-by-tile (right)

Imagination is claiming, although not yet quantifying, power savings from the A-Series architecture (It has lower power compared to competitors at the same clock and process) and foresees this giving it an advantage in phones used for gaming.

Most mobile GPUs struggle to deliver consistent gaming experiences due to thermal constraints. They are fast for a while, then slow, and then never recover, said Imagination. IMG A-Series delivers sustained performance for extended game play at consistent frame rates avoiding thermal panic clock throttling, glitches or over-heating.

The firms tile-based deferred rendering, where only what is needs to be visible on the screen is drawn, is part of power saving, as is active dynamic voltage and frequency scaling, controlled by low-latency deadline scheduling algorithms. If parts of the GPU arent fully utilised or needed, they are immediately slowed down or even put to sleep to ensure power efficiency, said Imagination.

For development, there is a tool-set and SDK (software design kit) as well as some on-GPU hardware for example, counters have been included to report per-tile processing (in the form of a visual heat map in the tools) to allow application developers to focus additional hardware at bottle-neck-causing tricky parts of an image.API standards including OpenGL ES, Vulkan, OpenCL are supported.

Computational flow in A-Series (right)

Suffixes from earlier Series-n nomenclature is retained.

A-Series series will be split into:

IMG A-Series cores are:

Concurrent tasks in A-Series

Within each group of 128 parallel ALUs, all ALUs perform the same operation simultaneously, so any multi-tasking within a 128 ALU block is time-sliced on to it.

To save power and time during task-switching,ALUs have register bank to keep the data from a large number of threads local, said Beets.

To map and prioritise tasks on to the various time-slices available across up to four SPUs, imagination has created an operating system calledHyperLane, which can treat all available GPU resources as up to eight virtual GPUs dubbed HyperLanes each of which can run more than one task.

As well as 32bit floating point data, for artificial intelligence processing each ALU can work with 8bit weighted data. HyperLane has a feature called AI Synergy which enables sufficient GPU graphics performance to be delivered, while allocating spare resources to implement programmable AI. AI Synergy delivers programmable AI in the lowest silicon area, while a unified software stack enables flexibility and performance, said he firm. The resource split between graphics and AI processing can be dynamic.HyperLane technology can also isolate protected content for rights management. All IMG A-Series GPUs support up to eight HyperLanes.

HyperLane also interacts with virtualisation hardware which is controlled by a separate on-board microcontroller running hypervisor code. Separated by hardware virtualisation, up to eight programmes can be run independently.

Visit link:
Imagination boosts parallelism in GPUs to speed mobile graphics and AI - Electronics Weekly

Many craftspeople operate their businesses from home either through choice or necessity. What are the advantage and disadvantages of plying a trade where you sleep and eat?

Deirdre McQuillan spoke to three women, a jeweller, a tile designer and a soap maker about how they combine living and working in the family home.

Valerie Reid, soap maker I have lived in Dalkey for 32 years in an old 1860s terrace house and have a little studio at the back where I make the soap. It was a lean-to, so we had to put in sliding doors and a better, watertight roof to make it cosy.

I started in September 2013 with a really good friend Angela Reilly, having learnt the craft in France from a friend of my sister who lives there.

It is hard for a small craft operation to make money with two people, so Angela moved back to work in her husbands business while I stayed on and continued from 2016.

After my eldest son left home I took over his room because as the soap is made by cold process, once it is cut, it has to sit on a shelf for a month or six weeks which we call curing, so I put shelving in that room and used it for storage once the soap is ready, packed and labelled.

My husband is a graphic designer and does all the design work for the soap so there is a nice uniformity to it all. My studio is off the kitchen, so I can walk through and have all my ingredients there the pure scented oils, the powders, the charcoal and the natural colourings. I usually spend at least three days there more coming up to Christmas.

I have four grown-up kids and a boy with special needs so from the get-go I always worked from home. He is 25 now and very able-bodied and out every day. I like working from home and the freedom it gives me. If the kids are sick, I am around.

I did toy with the idea of getting an independent place outside but then thinking about rates and all the extras and having to go out in the morning... it put me off. This way I can make soap anytime I want. I am a craft person and love working with my hands and couldnt sit in an office.

I need a hot plate but my moulds are wooden wine boxes and I dont waste anything I give scraps to a felt worker and I have made bags of samples with scraps as I have always wanted to be as eco as possible so no fancy packaging everything is packed in Kraft paper and the liquid soap in glass bottles, so everything can be recycled.

Alanna Plekkenpol , creator of art on tilesI live in our Georgian family house on a road off the seafront in Bray and have been there for the past three years since arriving from Amsterdam where I am from I am half Irish, half Dutch.

I have a room which doubles as a living space when I am not working it has a modern, contemporary interior with a lot of navy and mustard, big enough for a desk, a sofa and a wall cabinet.

What I do is create my illustrations [for the tiles] digitally and then rework them with original Dutch Delft antique patterns and collages, so my pieces combine that with graphics. I work with a small specialist ceramic company in Porto who have specific techniques of applying and hand printing my illustrations onto tiles. I work closely with them.

I have always worked from home because I also have a full-time job in Bestseller, the Danish clothing company (whose brands include Vero Moda and Jack &Jones) whose Irish base is in Ballymount I am in charge of its marketing and PR.

But the best part of working from home is being able to set your own timeline and what I love is the fact that you have complete silence around you. Some things I would work on for one or two weeks and then come back to a week later inviting comments from friends.

It is the balance between what my creative identity is in my illustrations and balancing that with commercial appeal. I am hoping to move to Ashford soon to a lovely new estate in a very scenic area, five minutes from Mount Usher where I will continue to work [at my craft] at home.

Maureen Lynch, jeweller I live in Dun Laoghaire close to the sea in a 1920s house and work in a converted garage, so I have my own entrance. I love working from home because I love the fact that there is no commuting and I can switch myself off. And also, it means that I am still engaging with the children, now 13, 15 and 17. As a working mum, I think it is great.

I have spent all my working life working from home and it is very healthy for the children because it means that they see what I do. My studio is quite dirty, but I have an ultrasonic machine and a drill that sounds like a dentists drill and I just put them on when I dont want them there.

Its lovely for them because they bring their friends in to see what is going on and the different stages. My son likes to bring his girlfriends in to show them the sparkly jewellery. The boys love files and hammers and the polishing machine. They love the tools whereas the girls tend to look at the finished jewellery.

I really enjoy it and get lost in my work still. It is therapeutic filing and hammering is like therapy, meditation. I love working for myself and I swim every day either at Seapoint or the Forty Foot, depending on the tide and love the feeling of saltwater on my skin.

My new jewellery collection in silver with some gold is called Wave and based on the sea. Its me going back to my roots because it is solid, weighty and smooth and more sculptural and I think the Scandinavian influence is stronger than ever. Its my style and I cant stop doing something that is me.

Visit Maureen Lunch, Valeri Reid and Alanna Plekkenpol at Gifted, the crafts and gift fair at the RDS December 4th to 8th.

Read more:
Home-made success: meet the crafters whove turned their homes into workspaces - The Irish Times

When web designer ShayStarrenburg decided to upcyclea Kmartplayhouse fro her son, she wanted to get creative.

Instead of another cafe, shop or miniature villa, she and builder husband John decided tocreateatattoo parlour complete with coffee machine, monogrammed cups and temporary tattoos for son Hudson, 1, to give his customers.

"Neither of ushave tattoos! It was just something that was a bit cool, a bit different.

SHAY STARRENBURG

The Starrenburgs upcycled their son Hudson's Kmart playhouse into a miniature tattoo parlour.

"We painted it and assembled it and we added on all the signs. John cut the plywood for the signage and I made all thevinylto on on those. We tried to cram it all into a weekend."

READ MORE:*The best $6 you'll spend at Kmart: The citrus hand press* The $3 Kmart tea towel hack you've got to try * Christmas gift guide: Seven luxe homewares for around $30 or less

It's the shortest renovation job the couple have done since they moved into their 1950s house in 2013.

Barring a few smaller jobs left to do, it's taken them five years of weekends and holidaysto turn their 1950s home into a bright,airy, modern abode.

The work included removing walls and reconfiguringseparate kitchenand dining rooms into a bright, airy, modern living area.

"We had two winters after we moved in withouta ceiling at all because we were too excited to rip all the walls out. So that was a bit cold.

"We just did it as we had the budget to do it, but we don't really have any regrets because we've had so much time to think everything through and do it all ourselves."

The main project they completed first was removing three walls from the living room and dining area to open out the kitchen and living space.

"Then we added on a deck to wrap right around two sides of the house and swapped out two windows for doors. That was the main focus, getting that done.

SHAY STARRENBURG

There's enve a miniature coffee machine for custoimer waiting for new ink.

"Then we got pregnantand we thought we'd better hurry up and get the rest of the house finished. That's when John took a couple of weeks off work, stripped everything out, insulated everything, and relinedit allbefore Hudson came along."

After that it was decorating, when Shay's creative talents could really shine.

One of the most unique features of the home is a black and white mosaic tile designin the entrance way thatwelcomes visitors with a cheery "good day"as theywalk in. It was"a bit of work" cutting up the tile sheets to makethem fit.

SHAY STARRENBURG

Shay and John Starrenburg wanted to do something a little different for their son, Hudson, who's 1.

"John was talking to a tiler about what I had planned and he was like 'it's good that you're doing it yourself,if someoneasked me to do it I wouldn't'.

"I planned it all up in photoshop, laid it all out and glued it down. Then whenHudson was a couple of months old I got super motivated and decided togrout it while Johnwas at work. That was super hard - the grout was setting and I had a screaming baby and John got a flurry of phone calls, but we got it all done"

Sharrenburg, who runsweb design and photography business Idyllic from home, wouldn't change a thing about the time it took to complete the renovation.

"It was very dated the house, but overall in a good condition which suited us as we wanted to put our stamp on everything.

"When we first started the work I sillilythought 'oh yeah, this will be done in a year'.I think if somebody had told meright then it'd be five years,and we've still got a few things to tick off out list yet, I might have changed my mind. But I guess the best thing was having all that time to think. Our plans changed three or four times and it meant we ended up with plans that really, really suited us.

"Looking back that,there's nothing we would have changed,even if we had more money. So it was good to have time to think and make those really conscious decisions, rather than choosing what was really on trend."

SHAY STARRENBURG

Shay and John Starrenburg with Hudson when he was a little baby, at their renovated 1950s home in new Plymouth.

SHAY STARRENBURG

Web designer and photographer Shay Starrenburg works from home on her business Idyllic.

SHAY STARRENBURG

The kitchen is built from Mitre 10 shells, but John Starrenburg cut the doors himself, so they could easily be painted over if they decided to change the kitchen decor.

SHAY STARRENBURG

The home has great views of Mt Taranaki from theliving room.

SHAY STARRENBURG

The couple removed several walls to create a open plan living/dining area that opens onto a wrap around veranda.

SHAY STARRENBURG

The renovation took the couple about five years to complete.

Read more:
Kmart playhouse hack: Mum creates a kiddie tattoo parlour in the back yard - Stuff.co.nz

Unexpected roadworks can cause absolute chaos to anyone's journey.

Whether they're emergency repairs or ones you just didn't know about because you drove past the sign and it was too late to see it.

Well, fear not. We've put together a list of some of the main roadworks that are taking place over the next week.

There are a few locations which have some long term ongoing works such as the ongoing Station Masterplan , but others are just for the odd day or two.

Our list brings most of the major works in one place so you can plan your trips this week.

Some of the major works have been going on since last year. Warwick Road has been undergoing works due to the Station Masterplan since 2018, with work still ongoing now around the station and Central Six.

There are two roads in the city which have major works going on over the next week.

Warwick Road - Static bus lay-by closure and footway closures, in place from 7.30am until 4pm all week and ongoing until April 2020.

London Road - Lane closure outbound from 9.30am-3.30pm between December 9 and February 7 2020.

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Other than major works, across the city some roads will be closed , or have lane closures because of other works.

These works can include gully cleaning and pothole repairs, and bridge maintenance.

Below are the roads which will have either a lane closure or full closure.

Pickford Green Lane - Taking place for the next two days until December 4, a road closure will be in place for drainage repairs between 7.30am and 4pm.

A45 Dunchurch Highway - In both directions between Broad Lane and Birmingham Road, gully cleaning and pothole repair works will be taking place this week between December 3-5 during the day from 9.30am until 3.30pm.

Ring road - Several parts of the ring road will have lane closures and full closures in place while bridge maintenance takes place.

A lane closure is in place today (Tuesday December 3) between 9.30am and 3.30pm on Ringway St Patrick in both directions. Ringway Rudge will have a full road closure between 9.30am and 3.30pm on December 6.This is just underneath the bridge at junction eight - however traffic can still use the exit and entry slips for ring road access.

West Hill Road - Bollard installations will take place on December 3 between 9.30am and 3.30pm.

Station Avenue - Towards the end of the working week, Station Avenue in Tile Hill will be having work done on December 4 and 5. This will happen between the hours of 7.30am and 4pm.

Allard Way - On December 9 between the hours of 9.30am and 3.30pm, lane closures will be in place for bollard installation at the junction with Langbank Avenue and Jasmine Grove.

Sky Blue Way - Lanes one and two just after the pedestrian crossing will be closed on December 5 for patching works. Closures will be in place between 9.30am and 3.30pm.

Wainbody Avenue South - A road closure in place at the junction with the A45 also on December 5 for patching works.

Gulson Road - Lane closure has been in place here since November 18. It is due to remain until January 20 and it's on the approach to London Road.

Warwick Road - Footway and layby closure and two-way pedestrian signals near the rail bridge by Central Six.

Allesley Old Road - On Sunday December 8 between 9.30am and 3.30pm, a lane closure is in work for manhole cover replacement with work carried out by Severn Trent. The lane closure will be at the junction of Rushoor Drive.

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Original post:
The roadworks that may cause traffic in Coventry this week - Coventry Telegraph

Smart Alerts when you leave something behind in a public place are Tiles latest attempt to stay ahead of Apples anticipated launch of its own item tracker, which may be named AirTag.

We exclusively reported back in April that Apple is working on its own competitor to Tile, integrating with the iOS Find My app. One of the expected features is automatic alerts when you leave behind a protected item, and thats something Tile is now adding to its own products

Tile has currently offered three forms of protection. First, if you simply misplace something in your own home, you can use the app to make it sound an audible alert. The Apple Watch offers similar functionality, making your iPhone ping so you can work out where you left it.

Second, you can define safe zones, like your home, and be automatically alerted when an item leaves that area.

Third, if you mark a Tile as lost, anyone running the app will automatically and anonymously alert you when they come into range.

Engadget reports that the company is now adding the ability to warn you whenever you leave any protected item behind anywhere.

The company is relaunching Smart Alerts in beta to automatically warn when youve left a tracked item behind if its been there for at least five minutes. If you rush out of the coffee shop without your bag, youll ideally get an alert before youve reached your car. Youll need a Premium subscription ($30 per year or $3 per month), but it might be a small price to pay if you cant bear the thought of leaving a valuable item alone for more than a few minutes. The beta will be available in December.

Tile offers a range of products to electronically tag your valuables, ranging from a waterproof sticker to a wallet-sized Slim tracker to the Pro, with a 400-foot range and loud audible alert.

We recently rounded up everything we know so far about Apples upcoming product. The key selling point will be that, if you lose something, anyones iOS device within range will be used to help track it down.

The true selling point of Apples item tracker will be its integration with iOS. It is believed that you will be able to access your item trackers via the Find My device on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Once the item trackers are available, there will be a new Items tab in the Find My application for all of the things you choose to track.

The item tracker itself will be paired to a users iCloud account by proximity to an iPhone, much like AirPods. Users will also be able to receive notifications when their iPhone gets too far away from the tag. For instance, your iPhone could alert you if you get too far away from your keys or wallet. Certain locations can be added to a list of ignored locations so that the item can be left at those locations without you receiving a notification.

Furthermore, youll be able to put Apples item tracker in Lost Mode which means the tag will store your contact information, allowing other Apple users to read that information. In such instances, youll receive a notification when your item has been found.

Its not yet known when Apple plans to launch AirTag, or what it will cost. Tile products can cost less than $12.50 each when bought in multipacks. Smart Alerts will launch in beta shortly.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:

See the original post:
Tile matches expected feature of Apples AirTags item trackers, Smart Alerts - 9to5Mac

The recycling cycle taking place at Tarkett's new plant in Waalwijk, The Netherlands.

Last week, international flooring manufacturer Tarkett revealed another step towards a closed-loop production system in collaboration with Aquafil, textile pioneers and creators of ECONYL. While they have worked together for a number of years, this development is one which will revolutionise the contract flooring industry. Opening a new carpet tile recycling centre in Waalwijk in The Netherlands, Tarkett are offering the ReStart Take-Back Program: a post-use carpet tile take-back scheme for customers to take advantage of while simultaneously saving tiles from rising landfill levels. In utilising polyamide 6 (PA6) post-use yarn, it takes the partnership to another level of circularity.

With groundbreaking machinery to separate the fibres from the backing, (the two core components of carpet tiles), the key to this approach is the purity which remains after, making it easier for the materials to be recycled. Retaining more than 95% yarn purity after separation, the yarn is recycled by Aquafil and transformed into regenerated ECONYL nylon yarn. The backing, named EcoBase, was created by the company in 2010 and was designed for reuse and recycling from the outset giving it distinct advantage to bitumen-based alternatives. With 100% of Tarketts carpet tiles being recyclable, they are also now able to recycle tiles which haven't been manufactured by them. Thanks to this new technology, each material can be easily recycled in-house or with an external partner.

New machinery created by Tarkett means carpet tiles can be separated by component with such purity ... [+] making it easier to recycle.

This recycling operation not only closes the circle on their production cycle but also impacts their carbon footprint with an impressive 84% saving at the end of its life stage when compared against incineration, the method which has been used to dispose of most commercial carpet tiles. The ReStart take-back and recycling program and the increase of Ecobase backing production capacity are part of a 15 million investment from the global flooring leaders in a bid to create a circular economy within the group to fight against the climate crisis we face today.

One of the key factors to true sustainability is collaboration. To achieve quicker results in preserving and protecting the environment, knowledge and resources have to be shared. This is crucial, not only within an industry, but also between sectors to ensure change can impact a wider audience. Any successful collaboration goes beyond a customer and supplier relationship. states Fabrice Barthlemy, the CEO of Tarkett, reflecting on the partnership. Our vision is to get to a stage where all materials we use are recycled materials with the aim to get it to 30% by 2030. Collaborating with Aquafil helps us to take our mission to the next step. The CEO of Aquafil, Giulio Bonazzi, agrees. Transparency and trust is key in a collaboration, he comments, You have to share the same values and ensure the end goals are aligned with each other in order to make it work.

Post-Use carpet tiles waiting to be deconstructed and recycled at the new Tarkett recycling ... [+] facility.

The Waalwijk plant is the first to separate the materials with such clarity, and its location has been selected to help minimise its impact even further. Located centrally between the UK and the rest of Europe means the transportation of tiles sent to and from the plant is kept to a minimum. Our goal is to reduce our emissions year-on-year through adopting circular systems and green technology. continues Barthlemy. We already use 134,000 tonnes of recycled material each year. Accelerating our take-back program with our customers, which already has more than 400 participants in Europe, is a key focus. We have designed the carpet recycling facility with scaleability and efficiency in mind.

Fabrice Barthelemy, CEO of Tarkett and Giulio Bonazzi, CEO of Aquafil.

Looking at the building and construction industry as a whole, Barthlemy believes we can all take responsibility in reducing its impact. We always have to do more. he says, However, we do need more incentives for the industry. With incineration and landfill being the most cost-effective disposal solutions, this has to change in order for customers to see recycling schemes like this as the most viable option.

Current recycling figures for carpet tiles across Europe are still minimal: 60% of post-consumer carpet tiles end up in landfill, with 37% being incinerated and only 3% recycled. In a bid to change this, Tarkett and Aquafil are leading by example. Sustainable design begins with the end in mind. states Bonazzi. It is a journey and is more than just a recycled material. We have managed to reduce our carbon footprint by almost two thirds over the last 8 years and, through offering cradle-to-cradle solutions, we can positively impact industries to ensure systemic change can take place. Aquafil work with a vast array of designers and brands including names such as Stella McCartney, Napapijiri and Prada. Bonazzi is positive as to how these influential figures are helping to raise awareness around sustainability issues.

The yarn is separated from the backing of the tile with 95% purity making the recycling process a ... [+] lot easier.

Tarkett are keen to continue their movement towards a closed-loop system across all their products. An example is their vinyl production, where they salvage and recycle offcuts direct from sites across Europe. Furthermore, they plan to develop ways to also recycle vinyl post-use. Our aim isn't to make money from these schemes, its an investment for us to improve our systems and take responsibility for what we do. Barthlemy concludes. The biggest challenge is to ensure we engage with end users to salvage as many materials as possible.

The shift from a linear to a circular economy has begun and projects like this provide hope in knowing solutions are available for industries to positively adapt. Whilst time is not on our side, we need to take advantage of these schemes quickly to change industries at a faster pace.

You can find out how to join the ReStart Take-Back Program here.

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Tarkett Pave The Way With New Carpet Tile Recycling Factory In The Netherlands - Forbes

There are a lot of reasons to worry about what happens with your personal information online.Even if no one ever breaks into your bank accountor takes over your Facebook, that doesn't mean they aren't collecting your information and stitching together a profile that includes everything from your name and email address to yourphone numberandsocial media profiles.

The latest breach of personal information was discovered in October by a security researcher named Vinny Troia. Hefound almost 4 terabytes of data--about 1.2 billion records--simply sitting in an unsecured Google Cloud server,Wiredreported on Friday.

Troia describes the data as a collection of profiles that include home and mobile phone numbers, email addresses, work histories based on LinkedIn profiles, andother social media profiles like Twitter and Facebook.

"This is the first time I've seen all these social media profiles collected and merged with user profile information into a single database on this scale," Troia told Wired.

The database doesn't appear to include any Social Security numbers or account passwords--but that doesn't mean it isn't dangerous. In an era where cyber-thieves have grown increasingly adept at impersonating others in an attempt to gain control of user accounts, this information is a gold mine.

Some companies simply scrape together publicly available information and store it in databases for marketers or other interested parties. For example, at least some of the information Troia found--including 600 million email addresses--appears to have come from a company called People Data Labs (PDL), which provides it to a variety of customers.

This information is usually used to create profiles of consumerslike you and me--so that when we enter an email address to get a discount code from an online retailer, for instance, the retailer can match that email address to other information like social media profiles, job title, and even income.

That's creepy, to be sure, but technically legal. The problem iswhen all of that information ends up in the wrong hands.

PDL told Wired that it doesn't believe it was hacked, since it would be easier to simply obtain the information through legitimate means. But the existence of information itself is concerning.While it's not clear exactly who owned the database, what they planned to do with it, or where itcame from originally, the reality is that these companies have plenty of your personal data stored. Most people would likely be shocked to find out exactly how much information is collected, and how much these companies know about them.

Troia says he has notified the FBI and the database was takenoffline. He also uploaded the information to http://www.haveibeenpwned.com, which allows users to identify whether or not their personal data has been included in a data breach. If, for example, your email addresswas included, that doesn't mean your account has been compromised, but it's probably a good idea to at least change your password (I just did).

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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An Enormous Data Breach Left the Personal Information of 1.2 Billion People Sitting Out in the Open - Inc.

On one busy corner of Kansas City's St. John Avenue, a community is coming together to create a piece of art that reflects the whole world.

Home to culturally and ethnically diverse businesses and many artists, the city's Historic Northeast neighborhood is already a colorful place.

Rebecca Koop's pottery studio, however, was a gray building with smooth Art Deco curves (back in 1929, it had been an auto repair shop). Over the last couple of years, a picture of the earth began to take shape on the facade as Koop and her neighbors spent long summer days on scaffolding placing section after section of tile.

I just wanted an earth and I want it to be interactive and I wanted to meet my neighbors to have this be a community project, says Koop, and offer it as a teaching opportunity and really just kind of a neighborly kind of thing.

Fifteen years ago, she had the idea for a large-scale mosaic that would cover the front of the building. So she started collecting cheap, surplus tile.

At that time there was a lot of colored tile, and so I tried to just grab up as much blue and green tile as I could find," she says. "Its easy to find tan and taupe and white. And I thought I had enough. Well, no I didnt.

The building might not look big, but Koop has more than 600 square feet of surface to cover. Every tiny piece must be cut, shaped and organized into a pattern.

Where the earth meets space, I have the phases of the moon, says Koop. And of course between those phases we have space and points of light, so Im putting the constellations up there.

Koop is a full-time potter and ceramics teacher. Shes also the events director for the Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, and she runs the community garden next to her studio. But she spends most of her spare time cutting tile, grouting, and dreaming up the next section of the mosaic.

Koop's also a bit of an art activist. On Wednesday evenings, she invites her neighbors to make their own mark on her wall.

You just cant imagine that a tiny little inch tile is then going to develop into a square foot, which will then develop into an entire mosaic, says Beth Keith, who lives just around the corner.

Its a slow, plodding-type project," says Keith. "Those are the best kind, often. I can just come and be a little part of that and watch it slowly develop and then now we can stand back and look at it and say, 'Wow.' She should be proud.

Another helper is Koops intern, Adrian Feiber, a senior at The Kansas City Art Institute.

I had to do little sections here and there," Feiber says. "But I really couldnt tell you exactly, like, a spot that I did for sure. Missouri I remember, the Colorados and areas like that; Canada and the lakes. I know Ive got a tile in there somewhere, but I couldnt point to it exactly.

The work isnt easy.

Me and all of the others who have helped have cut, you know, many, many, many pieces of tile and thats pretty labor intensive, says Keith. And, you know, I am not a young thing so I would have aches and pains after cutting tiles.

Koop and her neighbors worked outside until late October. Now, the grout has been sealed and prepared for the winter. After two years of work, the mosaic now stretches more than halfway across the building.

Its been an experience," Koop says with a laugh. "Its an exciting experience, actually, because I can see the progress.

Theyll spend the next few months inside, cutting more tile into tiny pieces. When the weather warms up, they will be out here again. If all goes well, Koop expects itll be done this time next year.

Julie Denesha is a freelance photographer and reporter for KCUR. Follow her on Twitter@juliedenesha.

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Neighbors In Kansas City's Northeast Have Spent Years Piecing Together This Mosaic Of The World - KCUR

Sustainability experts for decades have been exhorting managers to focus more on the function their products deliver and less on the product itself. Biosphere Rule #5, Function Over Form, is focused on fulfilling customers functional needs in ways that sustain the value cycle.

This is the sixth in a seven-part series on what author Gregory Unruh calls theBiosphere Rules. Readpartsone,two,three,fourandfive.

Biosphere Rule #5, Function Over Form, is focused on fulfilling customersfunctional needs in ways that sustain the value cycle. As we will see, this ruleis an inevitable consequence of building out a Sustainable Product Platform,as discussed in the previousinstallment.

As always, the biosphere serves as our guide. Nature has been experimenting witha variety of species playing different ecosystem roles for billions of years.The diversity of the biospheres innovation is impressive. For example, thereover 200,000 species doing some form of pollination including moths,butterflies and bees; as well as bats, birds and bears. Nature is not fixated onthe specific organism doing the work, but more on the function pollination being fulfilled. It's the functions that provide the ecosystem services neededto sustain the biosphere.

Sustainability experts for decades have been exhorting managers to focus more onthe function their products deliver and less on the product itself. They call oncompanies to servicize their business and one of the first executives toheed this siren song was Ray Anderson, the legendary founder ofInterface carpet. In the1990s, Anderson read Paul Hawkens classic, The Ecology of Commerce whichcalled, among other things, for companies to stop selling products and startdelivering the functional service provided by the product. Pioneering theapproach, Interface launched the EvergreenLease in 1995 under theslogan, Selling carpet without selling carpet.

There were a lot of good arguments for leasing instead of selling carpet. Forexample, carpet wear follows the 80/20 rule, where 80 percent of the wear occurson the 20 percent high-traffic surface area. The carpet underneath desks andfiling cabinets gets almost no wear at all. In providing carpeting service,Interface could inspect the carpet on a monthly basis, and just replace thehandful of worn-out carpet tiles. Because less product is being replaced, itresults in an environmental and business win-win.

While the arguments were compelling, the Evergreen Lease ran into problems thebiggest of which was the tax rules around leasing. Leasing is tax advantagedbecause you are allowed to deduct lease payments as a business expense. Butthere is a legal expectation that the leased product will have economic value atthe end of the lease. If you are leasing a BMW, for example, the car isstill valuable when the lease expires. The problem with the carpet tiles is theydidn't really have any economic value at the end of their lease; there wasnothing that Interface could really do with them in fact, they imposed adisposal cost on the company. If at the end of the lease the product was usedup, from a tax perspective you weren't leasing anything; you were merelyfinancing the sale. For this and other reasons, the Evergreen Lease foundered.

Interface, however, was not staking its whole sustainability strategy onEvergreen and was, at the same time, actively pursuing a value-cyclingstrategyfor its carpet tiles developing series of technologies that would became oneof the first fully operational product value cycles. The Reentry2.0 technology allowedthe company to separate the soft-face fiber you walk on, from the heavy backingmaterial. The face fiber was then deep-loop value-cycled back into new fiber.For the backing material, Interface created CoolBlue,a system that would grind up old backing material and cycle it into fresh tilebacking. These technologies comprised a sustainable product platform and changedthe situation for Interface. Leasing became a possibility because the platformgave the tiles value at the end of the lease they were valuable, andnecessary, inputs for Interfaces production process.

But it was more than that: If your value cycle depends on a constant flow ofinput materials, and those input materials are old carpet that is installed atyour customers office building, do you really want to sell that carpet at all?The tiles are an integral part of your value cycle, so who really owns thatcarpet?

This question is an inevitable outcome for any company building a value cycle.The materials in your product, like the carpet tiles installed in yourcustomer's office, are actually part of your production system. A clientsoffice is serving as your warehouse, storing your input materials until they areneeded for a new production run. Your customer is fully integrated into yourproduction system. They are a customer, in that they are purchasing yourproduct, but they also then become a supplier of production materials. You entera new world where your suppliers and customers merge into custopliers andsurplustomers.

This is an inevitable outcome of pursuing a sustainable product platform. Youmove away from the sell it and forget it model into an entirely new businesssystem. Your company naturally moves to a servicized model, where the deliveryof functional service, not the transfer of ownership, becomes primary: productfunction over product form.

Dr. Gregory C. Unruh is the Sustainability Editor for the MIT Sloan ManagementReview and author of the new book, The Biosphere Rules: Natures FiveCircularity Secrets for Sustainable Profits*. For a limited time, SustainableBrands subscribers can download a complimentary digital copy of the book*here.

Published Nov 25, 2019 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET

Dr. Gregory C. Unruh is the Arison Professor of Values Leadership at George Mason University in the Washington DC Metro area, and the Sustainability Editor for the MIT Sloan Management Review.

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The Biosphere's Guide to Foolproofing Sustainability, Part 6: Function Over Form - Sustainable Brands