One man pushes the carpet industry to go green

The petroleum intensive industry of carpet is going green with the leadership and ambition of Ray Anderson, founder and chairman of Interface, Inc., the world's largest manufacturing of modular carpeting. A pioneer in corporate sustainability, Anderson set an ambitious goal in 1997 of Mission Zero®, a promise to eliminate any negative impact Interface, Inc. may have "on the environment, by the year 2020, through the redesign of processes and products, the pioneering of new technologies, and efforts to reduce or eliminate waste and harmful emissions while increasing the use of renewable materials and sources of energy."

Says Anderson, “If we’re successful, we’ll spend the rest of our days harvesting yester-year’s carpets and other petrochemically derived products, and recycling them into new materials; and converting sunlight into energy; with zero scrap going to the landfill and zero emissions into the ecosystem. And we’ll be doing well … very well … by doing good. That’s the vision.”

Anderson's quest for sustainability doesn't begin and end with Interface, Inc.; he also drives a Prius and built an off-the-grid home. An author of several books, his latest, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist, hit the shelves last month.