Taking on Mount Sustainability

Nothing about Ray Anderson's somber pinstriped suit screamed mountaineer. Nonetheless, the 75-year-old is 60 percent of the way up his personal Everest.

We recently saw the Atlanta-based businessman in Canada discussing his latest book, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist. It's a travel diary of sorts detailing his trek up Mount Sustainability and how he made a significant profit while doing so.

Mount Sustainability has a lofty, metaphorical peak - a zero carbon footprint for Interface, Anderson's carpet company. It first came to fame in the 2003 documentary, The Corporation. Carpeting is one of many industries that are often overlooked in the environmental movement. When we think sustainability, we usually think cars, water bottles and light bulbs - not the soft fibres under our feet.

For 21 years, neither did Anderson.

After starting Interface in 1973, Anderson admits he gave the environment no serious thought. But in 1994 when customers started asking questions, Anderson began reading and was shocked by his findings.

"I was flummoxed, I wanted to throw up when I heard how much we were extracting from the earth," he says. "I resolved if there is going to be 1,000 or 10,000 generations of humans yet to come, our environmental impact needs to be zero."

That's when Anderson started his ascent.

"This was a big undertaking," he says. "We realized the mountain had seven faces. We needed to clear each face in order to clear the top."

The first face was to eliminate waste. Interface began redesigning its products and processes to reduce and simplify. Material waste was remanufactured into new resources. In doing this, Anderson estimates they cut waste by more than half, diverted 100 million pounds of material and saved $372 million.

"That's a huge cost saver and avoider," he says. "The progress we made on this face has paid for the mountain climb."

Next, by creating factories without smokestacks and effluent pipes, Interface reduced its emissions by 30 per cent as it moves steadily towards zero. That is being helped along by the mountain's third face - renewable energy. So far, Interface has converted seven of its facilities to operate on 100 percent renewable energy like solar, wind and biomass.

Anderson then looked to change the linear "take-make-waste" process. For most companies, materials are extracted, made into products and discarded at the end of its lifecycle. Instead, Interface looked to make that process cyclical by recycling synthetics and keeping organics uncontaminated so they can be returned to nature. That ensures at the end of a product's lifecycle, it doesn't become waste. Instead, it becomes a resource in making something new.

Interface continued up the mountain by reducing and moving towards resource-efficient transportation. By taking part in a number of voluntary emissions-offsetting programs, Interface has planted 87,000 trees since 1997. That's helped reduce the impact of 174 million business-related miles.

That brings Anderson to the sixth face - shifting mindsets. Anderson constantly campaigns his message. And, through a speaking bureau at Interface, many employees deliver sustainability-focused speeches around the world.

"We need to realize we don't live on an infinite earth," says Anderson. "We make a profit to exist. But, we must exist for some purpose."

With Interface striving to fully meet these goals by 2020, Anderson is working on summiting to the seventh face - one that stems directly from changing mindsets.

He explains there is a need to create an honest marketplace with new business models of sustainability. By proving to stakeholders that a business can be both profitable and sustainable, Anderson hopes others with follow, helping to redefine commerce by joining Interface on the peak.

Only then can we leave something for the next generation.

"We have to remember what we learned as children," says Anderson. "You can't squeeze the golden goose to death."