The Corporate Captain Who Aims for 'Zero Footprint'

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By SCOTT CARLSON

Ray C. Anderson is founder, chairman, and former chief executive officer of Interface Inc., one of the largest commercial-carpet companies in the world. He is also one of the corporate world's leading advocates of sustainability. In 1994, when he was 60, Mr. Anderson experienced an epiphany after reading a book by the eco-capitalist Paul Hawken. The CEO decided that Interface's operations would become completely sustainable by 2020, and he estimates that his company's drive to eliminate waste, use recycled products, and curb water use has saved it more than $300-million in the past 12 years.

Q. A corporate leader is similar to a college president in some respects. What would you tell college leaders about how to steer a large organization toward an understanding of and action on sustainability? Where does one begin?

A. Well, it begins with you, Mr. President. Without a commitment from the top, it's very unlikely that sustainability will take root, much less flourish, in any organization. ... Just permission isn't good enough. It requires leadership and vision and staying on message, consistently and persistently, year after year. It can't be the program of the week, or the month, or the year. It's the program of a lifetime.

Q. Why is consistent hammering at the message so important?

A. Because it is so hard to shake the opiate of the status quo — the "we have always done it this way" syndrome, particularly in higher education, where inertia already grips institutions way more than it would in business.

Q. Like a corporation, a university has employees, customers, and shareholders, in the form of faculty members, students, trustees, and, at least among public universities, taxpayers and legislators. How do you get those constituents on board?

A. I talk to college leaders about this quite a bit. ... What I have said over and over again is that this year's third grade will be the graduating college seniors in 2020, the year my company intends to be totally sustainable — meaning zero footprint, taking nothing from the earth if not rapidly and naturally renewable. ... What must those graduates of 2020 learn if they hope to work for my company or companies like mine, and if they are going to work for a sustainable future? Internal-combustion engines, no. Fuel cells, yes. Central coal-fired power stations, no. Photovoltaics, wind generators, and biomass, yes. Economics that ignore externalities, no. But economics that [take into account] externalities [like the cost of pollution] so an honest market can work, yes. ... The old view of reality will be rejected, and new thinking will be embraced. That's what students will have to learn.

Q. But don't people respond to you by saying, "Coal is cheap and the status quo has always been profitable in the past, so why change?"

A. Actually, I usually get a standing ovation. They all know it's true, but it is so hard to change.

Q. Do you think that sustainability in the corporate world is the future, or are you an outlier?

A. It is the overriding principle of business — the goose and the golden egg. Nature is the goose, and if we squeeze the goose too hard, there goes the whole system, including civilization itself. ... I think more of my peers in the corporate world understand this every day. I really believe that an awareness of this is creeping in, and global warming is bringing it on much faster than anything else right now.