Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Inc, will be one of the speakers of the roundtable
Q: You have become a global symbol of sustainability. How do you feel about it?
RCA: Thirteen years of near total immersion in this subject have convinced me that a sustainable society into the indefinite future—whether seven generations or a thousand or more—depends totally and absolutely on (among other things) a vast, ethically driven, re-design of the industrial system, triggered by an equally vast mind-shift. This will happen, one mind at a time, one organization at a time, one technology at a time, one building, one company, one university curriculum, one community, one region, one industry at a time, until the entire system has been transformed into a sustainable system, existing ethically in balance with Earth’s natural systems, upon which every living thing utterly depends—even civilization itself. Knowing that our future depends on so many people and organizations that still have to ‘get it’ is a sobering reality. But I believe there is every reason for hope.
Q: As the InterfaceFlor CEO, how could you convince the members of the company’s board about sustainability? Have you faced any problem with that?
RCA: Interface is unique in that our journey to sustainability began in 1994. I was then CEO (and am now chairman and founder), and experienced an epiphany; a realization that our company’s legacy as an industrial company was that of plunderer of the earth. The new vision for the company, as a sustainable and eventually, restorative enterprise, created a new mission for the company and an opportunity to rethink everything, from how products are designed and sourced, to how they are manufactured, distributed, installed and reclaimed. Our board of directors shared in that vision, and more importantly, so do the 4,000 Interface associates around the world who bring their passion and ideas with them to work everyday. Sustainability has fueled a culture of innovation and risk-taking at Interface that has improved our products beyond anything they would have been without it, and has energized our associates with a higher purpose.
Q: How did The Natural Step help InterfaceFlor to draw strategies to become environmentally and socially responsible? Has InterfaceFlor used any other kind of tools, such as GRI, to measure its impacts?
RCA: The Natural Step was the first introduction we had to systems thinking and the first clear definition of sustainability, and it continues to influence how we approach sustainability today.
We organized our reporting format around GRI.
The lens of sustainable design, especially Biomimicry, design inspired by nature, has produced a well spring of innovation at Interface, and products that would never have been imagined 12 years ago. Interface designers routinely ask themselves such esoteric questions as: How would nature design a floor covering? Or how does a gecko cling upside down to a ceiling? From such questions have come some of the most strikingly successful products in the industry’s history.
Q: It is known that InterfaceFlor had a huge problem regarding electricity consumption and water waste. How did you cope with these problems?
RCA: Experimenting with renewable and alternative forms of energy, and with the amount and forms of energy we use, has been a focus of our sustainability journey. Renewable energy accounts for 17% of the total energy used in manufacturing facilities at Interface. Energy derived from biomass, landfill gas, and green electricity are a part of our overall strategy to increase the use of renewable energy. Three facilities currently have photovoltaic arrays onsite, and six of eleven facilities have achieved 100% renewable electricity, through a combination of on-site generation, the purchase of renewable energy credits and the purchase of green electricity through the grid, where available.
Interface’s strategy takes into account the facility’s location, energy demand, and local climate. For example, Interface actually has sites with solar power installations in sunny Southern California and Southwest Georgia in the United States.
At other facilities, we have contracts with local utilities for various forms of renewable energy, including one facility which uses biomass tapped from a local landfill, a project Interface pioneered with the city of LaGrange, Ga., and the EPA’s landfill project. Capturing methane and converting it to natural gas to power boilers at the Interface plant (and power to other local businesses) has proved to be a win/win/win – for the company, which has a renewable energy source; for the community, who now breathe cleaner air; and for the city, who now has a new revenue stream.
Waste reduction not only lightens our footprint, it improves the quality of our products. It is another of the seven fronts upon which Interface is pursuing zero footprint, and to date, Interface has reduced and/or avoided over $350 million USD in waste; funding which has contributed to our ability to fund R&D for sustainable development.
Waste reduction is accomplished at each business unit via self-managed QUEST (Quality Utilizing Employee Suggestions and Teamwork), where Interface associates are incentivized for identifying, reducing and avoiding waste. And while waste reduction was initially an internal effort focused on the manufacturing process, today we are pioneering waste reduction in other aspects of our business, including reducing and avoiding waste that occurs during product installation.
Recycling is another way to reduce waste to landfills. Since 1995, Interface has diverted over 110 million pounds of carpet from the landfill, and that number is growing exponentially now thanks to an investment in a new technology that allows us to cleanly and efficiently recycle not only carpet backing, but also the nylon face fiber – valuable molecules that started out as petroleum, but will have life again and again, either as carpet or via other industries, as other recycled plastics products.
Pollution prevention is part and parcel to all sustainability efforts at Interface, and has been achieved through process redesign and efficiencies.
For example water usage is down by 80% in carpet facilities. A major factor is abandoning energy- and water-intensive printing for a more efficient way to create patterns with its carpet tiles.
Fifty-six percent of our smokestacks have been closed off, obviated by process changes; 84% of our effluent pipes have been abandoned, also obviated by process changes. Our goal is to eliminate smoke stacks and effluent pipes altogether.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from 155 million airline passenger-miles have been off-set by the planting of 75,000 trees, though admittedly there’s a time lag for the trees to grow; and our vehicle fleet’s CO2 emissions have been completely off-set, with “trees for travel” and other off-sets costing just 2-1/2¢ per gallon.
Q: How do you see the CSR movement in the coming years?
RCA: True corporate social responsibility means that we’re taking not only our economic return into account, but also the environmental and social impact of our decisions. As resources become more scarce, we have the imperative to rethink the entire industrial system. Transferring resource intensive processes into labor intensive processes – sometimes called ‘green collar jobs’ – creates a win/win/win for people, for the environment, and for business.
Q: What do you mean when you say InterfaceFlor will eliminate any negative impacts the company may have on the environment by the year 2020? How the company will be by that year? What are you doing to achieve it?
RCA: Mission Zero is what we call our goal to eliminate our negative footprint by 2020. All of the efforts I’ve described above are a part of Mission Zero. We’re pursuing Mission Zero simultaneously on seven fronts, which include:
Waste elimination. Eliminating the very concept of waste, emulating nature in our industrial processes.
Benign emissions, to do no further harm to the biosphere. This means re shaping inputs to our factories, working up-stream.
Renewable energy, focusing on energy efficiency first, then harnessing sunlight, wind, bio mass, and (someday) hydrogen—to cut the fossil fuel umbilical cord to Earth—and closing any remaining “carbon gap”, so to speak, with verified greenhouse gas offsets.
Closed loop material flows, to cut the material umbilical cord to Earth for virgin, fossil-derived materials, by creating cyclical flows.
Resource efficient transportation, to achieve carbon neutrality by eliminating or off-setting greenhouse gases generated in moving people and products.
Sensitivity hook up. Perhaps this is the most important and should come first, because nothing lasting happens without it. It is the culture shift, the mind set shift, to sensitize and educate everyone, changing minds – customers, suppliers, employees, and communities, to inspire environmentally responsible actions (the thousands of little things everyone can do).
Commerce redesign depends on getting the other six right. Then we hope to pioneer the true service economy, that goes beyond people selling their service—accountants, consultants, lawyers, teachers, waiters, etc.—to selling the service that our products provide, instead of selling the products themselves.
Q: InterfaceFlor also operates in Brazil. How does the company contribute to the CSR movement in the country?
RCA: I would refer you to Luciano Bonini ([email protected]); he has great things to report on what the Latin American business is doing around sustainability and corporate social responsibility in Brazil.
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