Sherpa for sustainability

Ray Anderson

It’s been about 15 years since Ray Anderson, the founder and chairman on Interface Inc., had an epiphany that changed the course of his company, setting a goal to eliminate Interface’s negative environmental impacts by 2020—a journey Anderson refers to as “climbing Mount Sustainability.”

With $1.1 billion in sales in 2008, Atlanta-based Interface (Nasdaq: IFSIA) is the world’s largest modular carpet manufacturer. One of the biggest players in an extremely petroleum-intensive industry, Interface has become a model for other corporations looking to adopt meaningful sustainability initiatives—known as Mission Zero in Interface’s case—and still make a profit. In this way, Interface has become “a sherpa on Mount Sustainability,” Anderson says.

“If we can do it, anyone can; and if anyone can, everyone can,” Anderson told an audience gathered in San Francisco in May 2009 for the Sustainable Industries Economic Forum. After a discussion on topics ranging from biomimicry to the importance of putting a price on carbon emissions, Sustainable Industries sat down with Anderson for a conversation about Interface’s progress in its mission. 

SI: How far along are you in your Mission Zero goal? How far up Mount Sustainability are you?
RA: We’re probably more than halfway. It depends a lot on how you weight the individual elements of the journey, but in terms of greenhouse gasses, for example, we’re down 71 percent [in tons]. … In areas like waste elimination, we’re about halfway. In terms of renewable energy, we are 28 percent of the way.

But…we’re almost 90 percent of the way on fossil fuel-derived electricity. … In renewable materials, we’re only about a quarter of the way, but that’s moving very quickly now, as we have just had technology breakthroughs in the recycling area. … Every day the recycled content of our products is increasing. Water [use] is down 74 percent.

SI: Do you think it’s going to be harder to get up the last half than the first half?
RA: You would think that would be the case, but actually the technology breakthroughs we’ve made recently enable us to see our way clearly to the top. It’s now a matter of execution.