Sustainability hurts business? It's a myth
I earned the handle “Radical Industrialist” some time back in the late 1990s, when my company and I were beginning to chart our course up what we have called “Mount Sustainability”, and first began to talk about it with other businesses.
The idea that we could take our petroleum-intensive carpet manufacturing business and re-imagine processes, products, and even the way we went to market was considered “radical” in the context of business as usual. Today, we’re 15 years into our journey and green is not necessarily a radical notion any more. Whether you think sustainability is the right or the smart thing to do (we’ve found that it is both) you can’t help but notice the business case we’ve been able to demonstrate at Interface:
1.Costs are down, not up, dispelling the myth that sustainability is expensive. Our first initiative, a zero-tolerance waste initiative, has netted us over $400 million in saved or avoided costs, more than paying for all the costs associated with pursuing sustainability.
2. Products are the best they’ve ever been. Sustainability is a well-spring of innovation, and our product designers have been particularly successful using biomimicry (the study of nature’s design principles) as a guide.
3. Our people are galvanized around our mission, owing to a sense of higher purpose and self-actualization that comes when we focus on something bigger than ourselves. Academics and experts who have studied the cultural transformation at Interface say they’ve never seen the type of top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top alignment that sustainability has helped foster at Interface.
4. The goodwill of the marketplace is tremendous, bringing business to Interface because customers want to be aligned with a company that is trying to do the right thing by our environment. No amount of marketing, no clever ad campaign, could create the kind of customer loyalty that we have experienced. It makes sense, given that the whole journey began for us when our customers started asking, “What is Interface doing the for the environment?”
Sustainability is not a program of the month or a faddish trend that we’re riding, it is the commitment of a lifetime. It’s also a better way to a bigger, and more legitimate, profit―good for shareholder and the planet. There are new fortunes to be made in this, the second industrial revolution, and entrepreneurs everywhere should thank Rachel Carson for starting it.
By Ray Anderson
Ray C. Anderson is founder and chairman of U.S.-based Interface, Inc., a billion dollar, global carpet manufacturer, and author of Confessions of A Radical Industrialist (McClelland & Stewart, 2009). Read an interview with Ray C. Anderson on the MSN Green channel.
Posted by: Deb | Oct 29, 2021 12:57:32 PM
Cheers to you - 'a commitment of a lifetime' and it's not just ours! Permaculture and sustainability is and needs to be a 'new way of life' for everyone on earth. We need to look after ourselves and our own 'backyards' and not continue to be part of the 'consuming/disposing cycle' we've been living. thank you,,,,,,,,,,
Posted by: Mike | Oct 29, 2021 3:29:23 PM
What a load of crap.
Yes, increasing sustainability can be profitable to some industries under a given set of circumstances, but I am growing increasingly sick of people that assume that what will work for one company will work for all companies. I work in an industry where almost all of our environmental footprint is from air emissions (for every tonne of product we produce a few grams of waste, so there is little room for improvement there), and I can tell you that improving the environment means increasing costs pure and simple. Control equipment costs money to install and run, and only nets you more waste to dispose of rather than any type of sellable product.
Posted by: Ben | Oct 30, 2021 12:32:18 PM
Sorry Mike,
I think you've missed the point of the article. Interface's success on the sustainability front was not an end-of-pipe solution, like the one you describe in your note. It was about rethinking the entire process from beginning to end -a complete paradigm shift in the way we make things.
There is no reason this principle can not be applied to any industry. Yes it might be expensive at first and difficult to implement, but we are on the brink of some seriously grave resource shortages (not to mention how much human health will be affected if we fail to take environmental issues seriously) and an investment now will equate to long term rewards.
You should really read this book.
Posted by: Mike | Nov 4, 2021 3:11:29 PM
No, Ben, I did not miss the point. You've completely missed mine. This works for some industries, but doesn't for many. (by the way I live in a city with an interface plant and actually have had a tour of it...not at all saying that I don't love what they've done...just saying it won't work for many).
Please tell my how anything he's said applies to primary industries? Exactly how are you supposed to get nickel out of rock without heating it up? By what method can you turn limestone into cement without "burning" it? How can a foundry melt the metals it moulds without using tonnes of non-green energy without going bankrupt? Energy intensive industries have no choice but to use fossil fuels if they wish to remain solvent. If you think they should start using renewable biomass (which is still an increased cost), please tell that to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment who hates the idea.
Bottom line is, there are many industries that can make substantial improvements, but now matter what they do, they can not possibly make money from reducing their environmental footprint. As a test, I want you to come up with a way to reduce emissions from a cement kiln (particulate, NO2, SO2, CO2 or anything else you can think of) that will save the plant money. Good luck.
Posted by: j lougheed | May 7, 2021 7:32:54 PM
for years we have looked at the box. we see it and describe it as a box. someone comes along and says, hey you know what, maybe this box could be something else, see what we did with our box? we didn't know how it was going to change at first, but look at it now!
still, some others just can't see how the box will change, so they stop thinking and put their energy into keeping the box as a box instead. because everyone knows whatever has not been figured out already, never will.....lol