INTERFACE, INC. is the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpet, which it markets under the INTERFACEFLOR, FLOR, and BENTLEY PRINCE STREET brands. Bentley Prince Street also is a leader in the designer-quality broadloom carpet market. Interface is committed to sustainability and to doing business in ways that minimize the impact on the environment.

Interface, Inc., began in 1973 when Ray C. Anderson recognized the need for flexible floorcoverings for the modern office environment. Since then, Interface has grown into a billion-dollar corporation, named by Fortune as one of the “Most Admired Companies in America” and the “100 Best Companies to Work For.” It has diversified and globalized its businesses, with sales in 110 countries and manufacturing facilities on four continents and is now the world’s leading producer of soft-surfaced modular floor coverings.

Ray Anderson’s Epiphany

For the first 21 years of Interface’s existence, the company gave no serious thought to what it was taking from or doing to the Earth. In the mid-1990s, Interface’s Chairman and CEO Ray Anderson shifted the company’s strategy, aiming to redirect its industrial practices to include a focus on sustainability without sacrificing its business goals. Anderson wrote a book entitled Mid-Course Correction, in which he discussed his own awakening to environmental concerns and presented a model for businesses to achieve sustainability.

In 1994, while preparing remarks on Interface’s environmental plans for a company meeting, Anderson read Paul Hawken’s book The Ecology of Commerce — an experience he described as an epiphany, a “spear to the chest” awakening him to the urgent need to set a new course toward sustainability for Interface. Coupled with Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, the book changed Anderson’s life and set the company on its journey of Mission Zero.

Evolving Toward a Restorative Enterprise

Interface committed to become the first name in industrial ecology worldwide. Anderson set before his global team the challenge to convert Interface to a restorative enterprise. As a first step, this means reaching sustainability in the company’s own business practices. To become truly restorative, however, will require Interface to ultimately return more than it takes. The Interface organization will meet that higher goal by helping other organizations achieve sustainability.

Organizational Learning

Throughout this journey, Interface has surrounded itself with teachers and thought leaders in sustainability to educate them, challenge thinking aa well as to hold the company accountable accountable. As led by Anderson, Interface began to think of its business through a lens shaped by the principles of The Natural Step, which asks how nature would design an industrial system.

Interface

Ray Anderson Biography: Founder & Chairman of Interface

Interface, Inc.

BOOK: Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose--Doing Business by Respecting the Earth

BOOK: Mid-Course Correction by Ray Anderson

BOOK: Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability

BOOK: 'Ishmael', novel by Daniel Quinn

Ray Anderson on the business logic of sustainability - TED TALKS (Video)