Interface, Inc: Ex-Corporate Plunder turns environmentalist

The reason I really like hybrid cars – the amount of reasons are almost endless – is because they provide the average person, the typical consumer, a real choice. Much like an election, a consumer choice is like a vote. Are you voting for the continued use of slave labor, or for the massive destruction of the environment? Unfortunately, the truth is, probably. We all are.

A choice, like the hybrid; however, offers consumers a corporate voice - a shout out -“No, I don’t want to support destroying the environment.” If we don’t utilize that choice, then we are dependant upon the good will of corporations to solve the problems of man. While corporations have done many great things to advance humanity into technology, many have lost sight of humanity.

Some businesses and CEOs do get the message. Companies like New Balance choose not to spend huge amounts of money on star-powered advertising because they don’t want to have to resort to slave-labor to produce their shoes, unlike the history of many other popular shoe companies. And of course, Toyota and Honda have pushed the bar on fuel-efficiency and global warming caused by automobile emissions.

Moreover, CEOs, such as Ray C. Anderson, founder and chairman of Interface Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial carpet tile, have also made a choice. In a Business Week article by Michelle Conlin, Anderson stated, “I realized the way of the CEO is the way of the plunderer. Someday people like me will go to jail.”

Over time, the Bentley-driving industrialist began to question the affect of his company upon the world. Were workers exposed to harmful gases? Was their product emitting harmful fumes into the homes of their consumers, into the environment? Is Interface wasting natural resources?

After convening a task force to look into these issues, the glaringly obvious answer was: Interface was wasting natural resources, emitting harmful emissions, and creating huge amounts of waste.

According to Conlin, Anderson searched for inspiration and found it in the form of a book, Paul Hawken’s, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. “The book argues that most manufacturing companies gnaw through the earth’s limited resources without regard to the poisonous legacy they often leave behind.”

Therefore, by 2020, Anderson pledged that “Interface would be a completely sustainable company, producing no dangerous waste, no harmful emissions, and using not a drop of oil.” So far waste is down 80%, emissions 46%, energy consumption 31%, and the use of petroleum-based products is down 28%. The result has been a savings of $231 million dollars.

Now Anderson’s story is being featured in the movie The Corporation which basically argues that companies are “psychopaths”. Anderson does disagree with that assertion, but concedes that the idea is one the must be understood by CEOs and Corporations. His actions also prove that corporate responsibility can still be profitable.

Other CEOs and shareholders better listen, the people are churning, and profit over people will not be an acceptable excuse.