This week’s “Apprentice” challenge is to share an inspiring business success story with our fictional small biz owner Kay. The story I want to share is about a man I’ve never met, he’s not exactly famous but his story of transformation towards a sustainable future inspired me. It’s a story for business owners, consumers and anyone who believes that they hold the power to change for the superior in their own hands.
Ray Anderson is the founder of Interface carpet tile company. In 1994, the company was successful, Mr. Anderson (then 59) was also by all counts a successful business owner.
Then he was asked to provide Interface’s sales force with the company’s environmental agenda. While Interface complied with manufacturing laws, the company was far from an example of an environmentally sustainable business. He couldn’t provide the answers.
So he started looking for them. He began to research environmental issues and soon realized how his company was harming the planet, a moment that he called “a spear in the chest.” (NYT)
From there, Anderson began a full-force makeover on Interface challenging his colleagues to turn the company into “a sustainable operation that takes nothing out of the earth that can’t be recycled or swiftly regenerated, and that does no harm to the biosphere,” and to do it by 2020.
And they’re, as of spring 2007, about 55% percent of the way to their collective goal. Anderson enacted waste reduction, recycling, and energy efficiency steps to get the business going towards sustainability.
Use of fossil fuels is down 45 percent (and net greenhouse gas production, by weight, is down 60 percent), he said, while sales are up 49 percent. Globally, the company’s carpet-making uses one-third the water it used to. The company’s worldwide contribution to landfills has been cut by 80 percent. - NYT
His new definition of success is one that’s changing the landscape of corporate sustainability, through example and through Anderson’s efforts to share his experience with bottom-line minded corporate executives around the globe. He has turned over the operating responsibilities at Interface and, at 72-years-old, is making sustainability his full-time job.
Ray Anderson transformed a business, a corporate mindset and his own life. He now drives a Prius and lives in an off-grid home with minimally invasive landscaping.
On reaching the epiphany that he could turn Interface from a waste making company into a “restorative enterprise”, Anderson said, “I’m part of the problem, I’ve to be part of the solution. Or I can’t look my grandchildren in the face.”
Via Executive on a Mission, NYT - There’s a video interview here where you can meet Ray Anderson which I highly suggest. And also, Mid-Course Correction: Toward a Sustainable Enterprise: The Interface Model
*Photo Jessica McGowan for The New York Times
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