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VOLUME 27
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Welcome to this month's E-zine. It has been a busy fall for us, but in the midst of the hubbub and travel, I would like to say a special thanks to all the people at the Ontario Heart & Stroke Foundation. I was thrilled to be part of their conference recently and to meet hundreds of people, many of whom were volunteers and health care workers, all of whom are working hard to make a difference to people's lives. One of the other speakers at the conference was Jiri Fisher, a young member of the Stanley Cup winning Detroit Red Wings who suffered heart failure on the bench during a game and was brought back to life by onsite medical staff and a heart defibrillator. Jiri is only alive today because of the work of the people at the Foundation, who had lobbied to get defibrillators into public places. It was exciting to me that this group of people making a difference came on the heels of last month's story about the passing of Dame Anita Roddick, champion of human and environmental rights and founder of the Body Shop. So continuing the trend for another month, in this E-zine we present a company whose goal has been even more ambitious. The company is Interface. Their business is carpets. It is an industry that uses huge amounts of energy in manufacturing and creates a tremendous amount of petroleum-based waste. Ray Anderson and his firm, Interface, have committed themselves to creating the first company that literally has a ZERO environmental footprint. They are a model of the future. We hope you enjoy and learn from their saga. Yours in leadership
Please visit our website at www.themarkofaleader.com |
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FEATURE
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INTERFACE - RETHINKING THE ECOLOGY OF A CORPORATION
Ray Anderson, a classic entrepreneur and industrial engineer by training, started a small carpet manufacturing company called Interface in 1973, specializing in free lay carpet tiles. A deal with Britain's Carpets International soon catapulted his small company into the big time, as he turned their focus to becoming the leader in the new market of commercial carpet tiles. Ten years later he took over Carpets International and suddenly Interface, based in LaGrange, Georgia, was the world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer. Ecology had never been a focus for the company. As Anderson says, "I never gave one thought to what we took from or did to the Earth, except to be sure we obeyed all laws and regulations." 
Then in 1994, his research division organized a task force to review and create an environmental vision for the company. They asked Ray for his vision - and he had none. Coincidentally, he was sent a copy of Paul Hawken's groundbreaking book The Ecology of Commerce. Anderson cried as he read it, and his life was forever altered. "I read it and it changed my life. It was an epiphany. I wasn't halfway through it before the vision I sought became clear, along with a powerful sense of urgency to do something. Hawken's message was a spear in my chest that remains to this day." He agreed with Hawken's basic philosophy - that while business is part of the problem, it can also be a part of the solution. Business is the largest, wealthiest, most pervasive institution on Earth, and responsible for most of the damage. It must take the lead in directing the Earth away from collapse, and toward sustainability and restoration. 
One of the shocking facts that struck Lawrence - and should shock us all - is that only about 3% of the products we manufacture have value after 6 months! The energy and raw materials required to make these products, and the impact on having to dispose of them, is unbelievable. We have built a disposable world. And, as we all know, it simply cannot continue. Ray Anderson decided his company should do something about it. Anderson gave the task force a kick-off speech that stunned them, and galvanized the company into action. The man who had no vision was suddenly afire with a bold plan unlike anything any corporation had ever attempted before. This would not be a small course correction or change in policy. They would literally redesign their corporation to be sustainable. 
Like so many great leaders, Ray Anderson's epiphany turned into an ambitious but compelling vision: To be the first company that, by its deeds, shows the entire industrial world what sustainability is in all its dimensions: people, process, product, place, and profits - by 2020 - and by doing so we will become restorative through the power of influence. This vision is more simply articulated in what Interface calls Mission Zero: The promise to eliminate any negative impact their company may have on the environment by the year 2020. Now it is one thing for a service company to try to have no negative impact on the environment. But a huge global manufacturing company that uses petroleum products and tremendous amounts of energy in the manufacturing process - now that's quite another thing. 
And Interface defined sustainability to go far beyond just the environment, including people and integrating the bottom line impact of what they were doing into their mission. They defined 7 different categories and challenges: 1. Eliminate Waste: Eliminating all forms of waste in every area of business; 2. Benign Emissions: Eliminating toxic substances from products, vehicles and facilities; 3. Renewable Energy: Operating facilities with renewable energy sources - solar, wind, landfill gas, biomass, geothermal, tidal and low impact/small scale hydroelectric or non-petroleum-based hydrogen; 4. Closing the Loop: Redesigning processes and products to close the technical loop using recovered and bio-based materials; 5. Resource-Efficient Transportation: Transporting people and products efficiently to reduce waste and emissions; 6. Sensitizing Stakeholders: Creating a culture that integrates sustainability principles and improves people's lives and livelihoods; 7. Redesign Commerce: Creating a new business model that demonstrates and supports the value of sustainability-based commerce. 
Ambitious goals, to say the least. But for over a decade now the entire organization has been aligned behind climbing what they refer to as Mount Sustainability, with some impressive results.
Impressive numbers! Anderson describes the future of the company this way: If we're successful, we'll spend the rest of our days harvesting yesteryear's carpets and other petrochemically derived products, and recycling them into new materials; and converting sunlight into energy; with zero scrap going to the landfill and zero emissions into the ecosystem. And we'll be doing well ... very well ... by doing good. That's the vision. 
It is a vision that has focused Interface, set it apart from its competitors, and helped it deliver consistent results across every part of the organization for over a decade. It is also good business. Anderson says: In the eight years that we spent first planning and then figuring out how to integrate sustainability into our business, we have learned, without a shadow of a doubt, that this approach is a better business model, in the strictest business sense. Today, as Chairman, Ray Anderson spends most of his time travelling the world speaking to businesses and encouraging them to create sustainable models. Let's hope his words spark others to take the kind of action that his team at Interface did. |
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Please visit us at www.themarkofaleader.com. Copyright 2007 Mark of a Leader |
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