**2.1. The ceramic industry as an active agent for the improvement of sustainable development**

The industrial segment of red clay-based ceramics, also known as structural ceramics, is part of the nonmetallic mineral sector of the mineral processing industry, sharing the entire production chain of civil construction. The following products make up this segment, bricks, roofing tiles, blocks, and paving ceramic floors, among others.

Several researches have reported on the state of the art of using various wastes to red clay-based ceramic products, such as red mud of Bayer process [7], fluorescent lamp glass waste [8], granite waste [9], effluent sludge from paper industry [10], blast furnace sludge [11], and sugarcane bagasse ash [12], among others. This potential is based on basically two particularities of this industrial sector, the characteristics of the raw material and the high production volume [4].

Dondi, Marsigli, and Fabbri [6] elaborated a classification in order to organize different types of industrial solid wastes as to their main influence when incorporated to the clayey bodies for ceramic production. Through extensive bibliographical research, these authors categorized the residues into combustible residues, fly ash, flux residues, and plasticity-modifying residues.

More recently, Vieira and Monteiro [13] presented a new classification for industrial solid waste aiming its application as raw material for ceramic production for civil construction. In this classification, the authors propose only three categories, being combustible residues, flux residues, and property-modifying residues. Thus, fly ash was excluded from the old classification and should now be classified as combustible waste, and the category of plasticitymodifying waste was renamed as property-modifying waste, since not only plasticity but also other properties could be altered by waste that did not fit the other categories of classification.
