Taking ownership of a sustainable future

Three CEOs offer lessons on their pursuit of sustainability.

 
At the height of his career in 1994, Ray Anderson, the former CEO of carpet manufacturer Interface, was asked by a customer: “What is your company doing for the environment?” This question would come to define the rest of his life and what he would later call his “midcourse correction.” Anderson discovered for the first time that Interface was doing more harm than good to the environment and came to describe himself as a “plunderer.” Awakened and with an urgent need to set a new course for Interface, he committed the company to becoming the world’s first environmentally sustainable—and, ultimately, restorative—carpet manufacturer, shaking the foundations of the petroleum-intensive carpet-manufacturing industry in the process. Thereafter, he went on a quest to prove that sustainability was not just the right thing to do but also the smart thing to do. He set aggressive zero targets in many areas: zero waste to landfill, zero fossil fuel energy use, zero process water use, and zero greenhouse-gas emissions. Today, Interface is a “mission zero” company with zero environmental footprint.

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