Business Lessons from a Radical Industrialist by Ray C Anderson with Robin White
NY: St Martin’s Griffin, 2011
ISBN 978-0-312-54455-3
(xi) Distancing ourselves from the wellhead requires that we reimagine the antiquated, linear, take-make-waste industrial system of which we are all a part. And instead, to become part of a thoughtful, cooperative, cyclical system that mimics nature in the way that we design, source, manufacture, sell, install - and eventually reclaim and recycle - our products.
(xxi-xxii) As you read this book, you will see that the choices - the trade-offs - we are told we must make between financial success and environmental success, between doing well and doing good, are just plain false.
(5) Here’s the thing: Sustainability has given my company a competitive edge in more ways than one. It has proven to the most powerful marketplace differentiator I have known in my long career. Our costs are down, our profits are up, and our products are the best they’ve ever been. It has rewarded us with more positive visibility and goodwill among our customers than the slickest, most expensive advertising or marketing campaign could possibly have generated. And a strong environmental ethic has no equal for attracting and motiviating good people, galvanizing them around a shared higher purpose, and giving them a powerful reason to join and to stay.
(6) Based upon our experiences since 1994, I can promise this: Done right, sustainability doesn’t cost. It pays.
(7) I stood indicted as a plunderer, a destroyer of the earth, a thief of my grandchildren’s future. And I thought, My God, someday what I do here will be illegal. Someday they’ll send people like me to jail. - Ray C Anderson
(11) According to Hawken [in The Ecology of Commerce], we didn’t own the earth. We were part of it. And there was no place called “away” for throwing things, either. Thinking there was had put us on a collision course with two of nature’s iron laws of thermodynamics that we have been slow to realize: nothing goes away or ceases to exist, it just disperses; and everything is connected - that what we do to the earth, we also do to ourselves.
(15) If I can be allowed to borrow something Thoreau once said: “What use is a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
(17) Anderson’s speech to Interface's environmental task force in August 1994: Every business has three big issues to face: what we take from the earth; what we make with all that energy and material; and what we waste along the way. We're going to push the envelope until we no longer take anything the earth can't easily renew. We’re going to keep pushing until all our products are made from recycled or renewable materials. And we’re not going to _stop_ pushing until all our waste is biodegradable or recyclable, until nothing we make ends up as pollution. No gases up a smokestack, no dirty water out a pipe, no piles of carpet scraps to the dump. _Nothing_.
…The past belonged to the labor efficient - replacing people with machines. But the future is going to belong to the resource-efficient,” I told them. “And that’s what Interface must become. If our competitors copy us, fine. The earth wins. If they don’t, _we’ll_ kick tail in the marketplace. Either way, we _will_ win.”
…So here’s the vision that Jim asked me to share with you today: I want Interface to be the first name in industrial ecology, and here’s my challenge to you. I want to know how long it’s going to take us to ge there. Then, I want to know what we’ll need to do to push that envelope and make Interface a _restorative_ enterprise. _To put back more than we take from the earth_ and _to do good for the earth, not just no harm. How do we leave the world better with every square yard of carpet we make and sell?
(19) “If we can make these changes,” Graham [Scott] told them [the environmental task force], “if we can transform a company that uses so much energy, so much oil, that wastes so much - if we can do all that profitably, then _any_ business can do it. _No one_ will have an excuse. And if we can show that to the world, I think it will make up for all the compromises we’ve had to make in our lives. Every one of them.” And then he sat down.
(31-32) To operate this petroleum-intensive business in a manner that takes from the earth only that which is naturally and rapidly renewable - not one fresh drop of oil - and to do no harm to the biosphere.
In short, _Take nothing. Do no harm_. The utility of that definition is that it works today and all the way out into the indefinite future, to any number of unborn generations, and focuses us on our business and what we must do better today, and day after day.
(37) Here’s the thing. While a few of us might enjoy the fruits of what we think is a free market, we all suffer the consequences of a rigged one, a market that is very good at setting prices but has no concept at all of costs. A market that’s rigged to get someone else to pay the bills whenever and wherever a gullible or unwary public allows it to happen. A system of economics that idealizes the so-called Basic Economic Problem as the driver of all economic progress. The “problem”? The gap between what we have and what we _want_; not _need_, want.
(39) In that kickoff speech, borrowing from Hawken, I said that every company has to face three ecological challenges honestly and head-on:
1. What we take from the earth.
2. What we make, and what collateral damage we do in the making of it (pollution of all kinds).
3. What we waste along the way (in all forms), from the wellhead to the landfill.
(40) Try this metric on for size: Ninety-seven percent of all the energy and material that goes into manufacturing our society’s products are wasted. Mountains of tailings pile up at the mines. Energy goes up the smokestack, leaks out the wires, and ends up as waste heat. Year after year we send a tsunami of scrap to inundate our landfills. Only 3 percent ends up as a finished product that still has any value six months later. Three percent!
NB: Swiss factory that provides cleaner effluent water than its intake water (in Bill McDonough’s Cradle to Cradle?)
(41-42) … now you see the seven paths to sustainability in sharp focus:
1. moving toward zero waste;
2. increasingly benign emissions, working up the supply chain;
3. increasing efficiency and using more and more renewable energy;
4. closed-loop recycling, copy nature’s way of turning waste into food;
5. resource-efficient transportation, from commuting to logistics to plant siting;
6. sensitivity hook-up, changing minds and getting employess, suppliers, customers, and our own communities on the same page; creating a corporate “ecosystem,” to borrow a term from nature, with cooperation replacing confrontation;
7. redesigning commerce, teaching a new Economics 101 that puts it all together and assesses accurate costs, sets real prices, and maximizes resource-efficiency.
(44) The truth is, attacking waste is the engine that will pull the whole train. If you’re looking for a quick, profitable assent up one of those seven faces of Mount Sustainability, going after waste is the natural place to begin.
(46) _Waste is any measurable cost that goes into our product that doesn’t add value for our customer._… Then, in 1998, we added this little kicker to our own definition: _All fossil fuel we use will be counted as waste to be eliminated_.
(49) … we do not count the carbon emissions benefits from the RECs we buy. Why not?
Because the rules for buying and counting RECs are still being ironed out, and there remains a danger of double counting the carbon benefit as well as questions about clear titles to the credits.
(50) Today the actual reduction in nylon for that plant’s products averages 17 percent, and the nega-energy generated each year (to the earth’s great benefit) will run that factory for more than two years, for in the meantime the factory has also reduced its energy usage. Strictly speaking, this is not waste control. This is a very careful redesign effort, and it has its own name: Dematerialization through Conscious Design. Incidentally, we do not count our suppliers’ nega-energy in our GHG reductions either.
(51) How do you start? Here are the key steps:
First, define waste and apply that definition across the board. Reject the temptation to include any allowable waste in your definition.
Next, set up a procedure to measure that waste accurately and fairly.
Then, once you’ve got your baseline established, set annual, year-on-year goals that are both challenging and possible.
Finally, plot progress and post it for everybody to see.
(54) 1. Measure on the macro but manage on the micro.
2. Make the waste number relative to output.
3. Index waste costs per unit to a historical baseline.
4. Measure consistently and fairly from one business to the next and share results, but compare each facility only with itself.
5. Post the results for all to see.
(55) Lina Marshall, one of our yarn preparation associates in my hometown of West Point, wondered out loud why we were buying Cool Fuel (gasoline with an added green tax) to offset the travel of our sales force but not that of our plant workers?
… Lina asked a good question, and it set off a chain of events that resulted in our Cool CO2mmute Program. In it we split the cost with our associates to plant trees that offset the CO2 emissions produced by their daily commutes to and from work. The first year 1,500 were planted. By 2008, that number had grown to 11,572!
(63) So here’s the big picture. As my associate Melissa Vernon says, “A ‘brown’ company cannot make a green product.” And as you will see, when we get to life cycle assessments, when it comes to being green you are your entire supply chain.
(64) That was my experience when I opened up Pandora’s box and asked for a complete inventory of every chemical we discharged into the air, water, and ground.
(65) Ultimately, we would send out into the world only valuable products (liked carpet tiles and broadloom carpets), plus clean air, clean water, and biodegradable materials the earth can use to regenerate itself. You may well ask, is that even remotely possible?
(68) As I understand the precautionary principle, it says that when the risk of not acting overshadows the cost of acting, it is time to act. When we slow down in our cars before taking a blind curve, that is the precautionary principle in action. It applies to business practices, too; and governments are not exempt either.
(69-70) [The Natural Step]
1. Substances extracted from the earth’s crust must not systematically increase in nature….
2. Substances produced by society (man-made materials) must not systematically increase in nature…
3. The productivity and diversity of nature must not be systematically diminished…
4. Fairness and efficiency are linked!
The fourth rule is the social principle. It mandates fair and efficient use of resources to meet humanity’s basic needs. Because there are so many genuine needs, they must be met in the most resource-efficient manner possible. Further, meeting the basic needs of the many takes precedent over providing the “wants,” the luxuries, for the few. (The Basic Economic Problem of Economics 101 rears its head again.) Why? Because violating this principle yields a bitter harvest of social and environmental instability. Humanity has already suffered enough from the results of resource wars fought over arable land, freshwater, or oil deposits.
… 5. Resource-efficiency is the rising tide that will float _all_ the boats higher.
(71) We must lift the poorest among us out of grinding poverty while repairing our damaged earth. This is, without much doubt, the greatest technical, moral, and ethical challenge humanity now faces.
(72) Their [Toxic Chemical Elimination Team] mission was to work with our upstream suppliers to eliminate all ecologically damaging from our facilities. No one stands alone.
… The objective? To make sure that every Interface facility, no matter where it’s located, no matter how lax the local environmental laws might be, complies with the strictest rules on air and water pollution in effect at any of our facilities anywhere in the world; that is, the strictest rules anywhere apply everywhere at Interface. We just do not believe a brown company can make a green product.
(73) Once out toxic chemicals teams knew what we were discharging, they went to work. After some initial disappointments, theyt eventually decided that we had to drastically reduce the number of suppliers we use. Why? To eliminate toxic emissions we had to work upstream with our suppliers to keep bad actors from entering our factories in the first place. Consolidating our suppliers made that an attainable goal.
(74) Today, an extremely efffective shield is in place against vendors sending us things we do not want. We have used this approach to screen out lead, mercury, perfluoronated alkyl surfactants, and other persistent bioaccumulating toxic substances and chemicals. What has all this cost us?
Nothing. Annual savings run about three hundred thousand dollars. By consolidating our supplier base, the fewer but larger contracts allow us to enjoy discounts we had not seen before. And even more important, our protocol has given our suppliers a very good reason (and a tool they can borrow) to take a hard look at _their_ suppliers, setting up a ripple effect that has spread, as more companies are motivated by enlighted self-interest to invest in benign even green, chemistry.
(78) Last year Wal-Mart announced an impressive array of energy and efficiency initiatives that came from their companywide sustainability plan, which is somewhat similar to our own Mission Zero.
(79) Dell, the computer maker, is another example of what can be accomplished when a company decides that just compliance isn’t enough
(99) Could they sell a product like that: Solar-Made™ carpet, something the world had never seen before. And their answer was, Bring it on!
…. All the talking, all the advertising and marketing in the world, could not have brought that recognition without the actual _doing_. When I say the goodwill of the marketplace has just been astonishing, that’s what I mean.
(106) So you see, decisions made in the round are right and smart. In the new thinking of sustainability, “extraneous” factors like market presence, reputation, and leadership are every bit as real and positive as the hidden subsidies to fossil fules are real and negative.
NB: The chapter on renewables is completely out of date as the prices of solar/wind have declined so drastically since 2011. The only thing still pertinent is probably the landfill gas story - diverting local landfill methane to power their factory, reducing emissions (and smells) while increasing the lifetime of the landfill and providing income to the town.
(107) I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation one day that showed the United States could have met its Kyoto commitment, a 7 percent reduction in greenhouse gases, on landfill gas alone, at a profit to everyone
(111) Consider the nine most energy-intensive industries - aluminum, metal casting, chemicals, oil refining, glass, cement, mining, paper, and steel …
(122) This is the dawn of a carbohydrate economy that will complement - someday, perhaps replace - the hydrocarbon economy. It evolves right alongside solar energy, leading to the solar-carbohydrate economy of the future, as we get ready for the end of oil.
(126) Recyclebank https://recyclebank.com/ - municipalities contract for a recycling system that measures what and how much is recycled and pays customers back with currency redeemable at participating local businesses
(128) "When you take out the carbon, you take out the cost." Tim Riordan, vice president for supply chain, Interface, Inc.
(136) It takes about 31,000 BTUs of energy to move a ton of freight by air. Move that same ton by truck and the energy intensity falls to about 2,300 BTUs. What about going by rail? It drops to an astonishingly low 370 BTUs per ton mile!
(139) According to the EPA, trucking accounts for about 27 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions here in the United States.
(148) When you take the carbon out, profits go up. Efficiency equals profits, profits equal good jobs, and good jobs mean a strong economy.
(151) … for an industrial company that really acts as if there is no away, everyone lives downstream.
(154) After all, nothing fails like success because success doesn’t prepare one for adversity.
(155) Our own culture shift in the direction of sustainability has many components. It begins with constant emphasis on safety in the workplace. It extends to organizing women's networks within the company, to counterbalance any good old boy networks still in place.
NB: Anderson mentions the importance of involving women in decision-making much more than just once
(156) Interface is a very small pebble in the world’s economy, something like 1/60,000 of global commerce in 2008. But our consulting arm, Interface-RAISE, has worked with some of the world’s largest corporations to help them adopt sounder, more competitive business practices.
(165) Georgia Tech School of Industrial and Systems Engineering chair for Natural Systems
(166) Early in our mountain climb we embraced our environmental initiatives under the label EcoSense. We developed Ecometrics for measuring progress and later, Sociometrics. Essentially, those together formed a road map to sustainability and a report card to show how far we have on our journey.
(167) [October 2005, Wal-Mart CEO Lee] Scott detailed Wal-Mart’s simple, straightforward environmental goals.
1. To be supplied by 100 percent renewable energy.
2. To create zero waste.
3. To sell products that sustain our resources and environment.
(170) She [InterfaceRAISE client] stopped a forklift driver [on the factory floor] who was transporting a big roll of carpet and asked, “What do you do here?”
“Ma’am,” the truck driver, James Wisener, said, “I come to work every day to help save the earth.”
Stunned by his answer, she started probing that forklift driver with more questions. Finally, James said, “Ma’am, I don’t want to be rude, but if I don’t get this roll of carpet to the next process right now, our waste and emissions numbers are going to go way up. I’ve gotta go."
(179) The numbers are different for every installation, but in general, 80 percent of the wear [on carpets] happens to just 20 percent of the carpet.
NB: Pareto
(185) Janine Benyus from Biomimicry, natural design rules:
Nature runs on sunlight.
Nature uses only the energy it needs.
Nature fits form to function.
Nature recycles everything.
Nature rewards cooperation.
Nature banks on diversity.
Nature demands local expertise.
Nature curbs excesses from within.
Nature taps the power of limits.
(189) There is a well-known environmental impact equation popularized by Paul and Anne Ehrlich that declares I = P x A x T. I is environmental impact (the bigger, the worse), P is population, A is affluence, and T is technology.
(189 - 190) But what if the characteristics of T were improved, not just here and there, but with its very basis fundamentally changed to incorporate the technologies of the next industrial revolution? Renewable instead of extractive? Cyclical rather than linear take-make-waste? Focused on resource efficiency rather than labor productivity? Benign in their effects on the biosphere, rather than abusive? And what if they emulated natural processes, in which there are no wastes? Mightn’t it be possible to restate the environmental impact equation is I = P x A/T2?
Move T from the numerator to the denominator and we can change the world. The mathematically minded will see this immediately. Now, the more technology of the right kind, the better. By harnessing technology to reduce environmental impacts, the technophiles and the technophobes, the environmentalists and the industrialists could be aligned and allied in their efforts to redesign and reinvent commerce (and save civilization).
Such a transformation will not happen overnight. There must surely be a transitional equation: I = P x A x T1/T2.
(192) There were no incentives, no tax breaks, no subsidies, mandates, or government agencies forcing us to do a thing. In fact, from our experience with the landfill gas project (the one the Environmental Protection Agency said was way too small to work), I’d say we were leading them.
(196) The status quo is an opiate.
(202) [1997 vote in Senate against Kyoto agreement] Senators were terrified that reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent over the next fifteen years would just cripple American industry. And that sounded truly dire. Who could be in favor of something like that?
For a little context, it is worthwhile restating that as Congress gave up and ran for cover, Interface was cutting its net greenhouse gas emissions not by 7 percent, but by 71 percent (in absolute tons) within twelve years, while our sales were increasing by two thirds and our earnings were doubling. Interface wasn’t crippled by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions; we profited from it. So that congressional terror was pretty much stuffed with hot air, lobbyist cash, and so much dead straw.
(204) 2006 - Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP)
(205) We were planning a step-by-step campaign to achieve nothing less than a 90 percent reduction in US greenhouse gases by 2050, with an interim 30 percent reduction by 2020 (the year Interface expects to be at zero emissions).
NB: Interface reached zero emissions in 2019
(207) Mr President: In your first 100 days….
take the lead by announcing that the largest single consumer of energy and generator of greenhouse gases, the United States government, will become climate neutral - zero net carbon emissions - by 2030. (The government’s own Mission Zero!)
(231) The Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development (ISTD) has evolved into a university wide advocate for sustainability. Like our own Mission Zero, it is guided by a long-range (in their case, twenty-year) plan to achieve sustainability at Georgia Tech.
(233) The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) - https://www.aashe.org/
https://www.aashe.org/calendar/
(236) To help with the search [for a green MBA], the Aspen Institute publishes a biennial survey called Beyond Grey Pinstripes. Its Center for Business Education publishes this ranking of business schools to spotlight MBA programs that integrat social and environmental stewardship into their curricula and research.
(237) The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has created its Institute for Global Environmental Leadership, and Interface holds a postion on its Advisory Board.
(241) Why should Christians care about the environment? I believe the signatories of the Evangelical Climate Initiative would say creation care has nothing at all to do with politics and everything to do with the fundamental responsibilities of faith:
because we should care for the world as God does;
because God has commanded us to be good stewards of the earth;
because it is a way of showing love for our neighbors, even if, from a climate perspective, our neighbors live in flood-prone lowlands or parched deserts thousands of miles away.
ISBN 978-0-312-54455-3
(xi) Distancing ourselves from the wellhead requires that we reimagine the antiquated, linear, take-make-waste industrial system of which we are all a part. And instead, to become part of a thoughtful, cooperative, cyclical system that mimics nature in the way that we design, source, manufacture, sell, install - and eventually reclaim and recycle - our products.
(xxi-xxii) As you read this book, you will see that the choices - the trade-offs - we are told we must make between financial success and environmental success, between doing well and doing good, are just plain false.
(5) Here’s the thing: Sustainability has given my company a competitive edge in more ways than one. It has proven to the most powerful marketplace differentiator I have known in my long career. Our costs are down, our profits are up, and our products are the best they’ve ever been. It has rewarded us with more positive visibility and goodwill among our customers than the slickest, most expensive advertising or marketing campaign could possibly have generated. And a strong environmental ethic has no equal for attracting and motiviating good people, galvanizing them around a shared higher purpose, and giving them a powerful reason to join and to stay.
(6) Based upon our experiences since 1994, I can promise this: Done right, sustainability doesn’t cost. It pays.
(7) I stood indicted as a plunderer, a destroyer of the earth, a thief of my grandchildren’s future. And I thought, My God, someday what I do here will be illegal. Someday they’ll send people like me to jail. - Ray C Anderson
(11) According to Hawken [in The Ecology of Commerce], we didn’t own the earth. We were part of it. And there was no place called “away” for throwing things, either. Thinking there was had put us on a collision course with two of nature’s iron laws of thermodynamics that we have been slow to realize: nothing goes away or ceases to exist, it just disperses; and everything is connected - that what we do to the earth, we also do to ourselves.
(15) If I can be allowed to borrow something Thoreau once said: “What use is a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
(17) Anderson’s speech to Interface's environmental task force in August 1994: Every business has three big issues to face: what we take from the earth; what we make with all that energy and material; and what we waste along the way. We're going to push the envelope until we no longer take anything the earth can't easily renew. We’re going to keep pushing until all our products are made from recycled or renewable materials. And we’re not going to _stop_ pushing until all our waste is biodegradable or recyclable, until nothing we make ends up as pollution. No gases up a smokestack, no dirty water out a pipe, no piles of carpet scraps to the dump. _Nothing_.
…The past belonged to the labor efficient - replacing people with machines. But the future is going to belong to the resource-efficient,” I told them. “And that’s what Interface must become. If our competitors copy us, fine. The earth wins. If they don’t, _we’ll_ kick tail in the marketplace. Either way, we _will_ win.”
…So here’s the vision that Jim asked me to share with you today: I want Interface to be the first name in industrial ecology, and here’s my challenge to you. I want to know how long it’s going to take us to ge there. Then, I want to know what we’ll need to do to push that envelope and make Interface a _restorative_ enterprise. _To put back more than we take from the earth_ and _to do good for the earth, not just no harm. How do we leave the world better with every square yard of carpet we make and sell?
(19) “If we can make these changes,” Graham [Scott] told them [the environmental task force], “if we can transform a company that uses so much energy, so much oil, that wastes so much - if we can do all that profitably, then _any_ business can do it. _No one_ will have an excuse. And if we can show that to the world, I think it will make up for all the compromises we’ve had to make in our lives. Every one of them.” And then he sat down.
(31-32) To operate this petroleum-intensive business in a manner that takes from the earth only that which is naturally and rapidly renewable - not one fresh drop of oil - and to do no harm to the biosphere.
In short, _Take nothing. Do no harm_. The utility of that definition is that it works today and all the way out into the indefinite future, to any number of unborn generations, and focuses us on our business and what we must do better today, and day after day.
(37) Here’s the thing. While a few of us might enjoy the fruits of what we think is a free market, we all suffer the consequences of a rigged one, a market that is very good at setting prices but has no concept at all of costs. A market that’s rigged to get someone else to pay the bills whenever and wherever a gullible or unwary public allows it to happen. A system of economics that idealizes the so-called Basic Economic Problem as the driver of all economic progress. The “problem”? The gap between what we have and what we _want_; not _need_, want.
(39) In that kickoff speech, borrowing from Hawken, I said that every company has to face three ecological challenges honestly and head-on:
1. What we take from the earth.
2. What we make, and what collateral damage we do in the making of it (pollution of all kinds).
3. What we waste along the way (in all forms), from the wellhead to the landfill.
(40) Try this metric on for size: Ninety-seven percent of all the energy and material that goes into manufacturing our society’s products are wasted. Mountains of tailings pile up at the mines. Energy goes up the smokestack, leaks out the wires, and ends up as waste heat. Year after year we send a tsunami of scrap to inundate our landfills. Only 3 percent ends up as a finished product that still has any value six months later. Three percent!
NB: Swiss factory that provides cleaner effluent water than its intake water (in Bill McDonough’s Cradle to Cradle?)
(41-42) … now you see the seven paths to sustainability in sharp focus:
1. moving toward zero waste;
2. increasingly benign emissions, working up the supply chain;
3. increasing efficiency and using more and more renewable energy;
4. closed-loop recycling, copy nature’s way of turning waste into food;
5. resource-efficient transportation, from commuting to logistics to plant siting;
6. sensitivity hook-up, changing minds and getting employess, suppliers, customers, and our own communities on the same page; creating a corporate “ecosystem,” to borrow a term from nature, with cooperation replacing confrontation;
7. redesigning commerce, teaching a new Economics 101 that puts it all together and assesses accurate costs, sets real prices, and maximizes resource-efficiency.
(44) The truth is, attacking waste is the engine that will pull the whole train. If you’re looking for a quick, profitable assent up one of those seven faces of Mount Sustainability, going after waste is the natural place to begin.
(46) _Waste is any measurable cost that goes into our product that doesn’t add value for our customer._… Then, in 1998, we added this little kicker to our own definition: _All fossil fuel we use will be counted as waste to be eliminated_.
(49) … we do not count the carbon emissions benefits from the RECs we buy. Why not?
Because the rules for buying and counting RECs are still being ironed out, and there remains a danger of double counting the carbon benefit as well as questions about clear titles to the credits.
(50) Today the actual reduction in nylon for that plant’s products averages 17 percent, and the nega-energy generated each year (to the earth’s great benefit) will run that factory for more than two years, for in the meantime the factory has also reduced its energy usage. Strictly speaking, this is not waste control. This is a very careful redesign effort, and it has its own name: Dematerialization through Conscious Design. Incidentally, we do not count our suppliers’ nega-energy in our GHG reductions either.
(51) How do you start? Here are the key steps:
First, define waste and apply that definition across the board. Reject the temptation to include any allowable waste in your definition.
Next, set up a procedure to measure that waste accurately and fairly.
Then, once you’ve got your baseline established, set annual, year-on-year goals that are both challenging and possible.
Finally, plot progress and post it for everybody to see.
(54) 1. Measure on the macro but manage on the micro.
2. Make the waste number relative to output.
3. Index waste costs per unit to a historical baseline.
4. Measure consistently and fairly from one business to the next and share results, but compare each facility only with itself.
5. Post the results for all to see.
(55) Lina Marshall, one of our yarn preparation associates in my hometown of West Point, wondered out loud why we were buying Cool Fuel (gasoline with an added green tax) to offset the travel of our sales force but not that of our plant workers?
… Lina asked a good question, and it set off a chain of events that resulted in our Cool CO2mmute Program. In it we split the cost with our associates to plant trees that offset the CO2 emissions produced by their daily commutes to and from work. The first year 1,500 were planted. By 2008, that number had grown to 11,572!
(63) So here’s the big picture. As my associate Melissa Vernon says, “A ‘brown’ company cannot make a green product.” And as you will see, when we get to life cycle assessments, when it comes to being green you are your entire supply chain.
(64) That was my experience when I opened up Pandora’s box and asked for a complete inventory of every chemical we discharged into the air, water, and ground.
(65) Ultimately, we would send out into the world only valuable products (liked carpet tiles and broadloom carpets), plus clean air, clean water, and biodegradable materials the earth can use to regenerate itself. You may well ask, is that even remotely possible?
(68) As I understand the precautionary principle, it says that when the risk of not acting overshadows the cost of acting, it is time to act. When we slow down in our cars before taking a blind curve, that is the precautionary principle in action. It applies to business practices, too; and governments are not exempt either.
(69-70) [The Natural Step]
1. Substances extracted from the earth’s crust must not systematically increase in nature….
2. Substances produced by society (man-made materials) must not systematically increase in nature…
3. The productivity and diversity of nature must not be systematically diminished…
4. Fairness and efficiency are linked!
The fourth rule is the social principle. It mandates fair and efficient use of resources to meet humanity’s basic needs. Because there are so many genuine needs, they must be met in the most resource-efficient manner possible. Further, meeting the basic needs of the many takes precedent over providing the “wants,” the luxuries, for the few. (The Basic Economic Problem of Economics 101 rears its head again.) Why? Because violating this principle yields a bitter harvest of social and environmental instability. Humanity has already suffered enough from the results of resource wars fought over arable land, freshwater, or oil deposits.
… 5. Resource-efficiency is the rising tide that will float _all_ the boats higher.
(71) We must lift the poorest among us out of grinding poverty while repairing our damaged earth. This is, without much doubt, the greatest technical, moral, and ethical challenge humanity now faces.
(72) Their [Toxic Chemical Elimination Team] mission was to work with our upstream suppliers to eliminate all ecologically damaging from our facilities. No one stands alone.
… The objective? To make sure that every Interface facility, no matter where it’s located, no matter how lax the local environmental laws might be, complies with the strictest rules on air and water pollution in effect at any of our facilities anywhere in the world; that is, the strictest rules anywhere apply everywhere at Interface. We just do not believe a brown company can make a green product.
(73) Once out toxic chemicals teams knew what we were discharging, they went to work. After some initial disappointments, theyt eventually decided that we had to drastically reduce the number of suppliers we use. Why? To eliminate toxic emissions we had to work upstream with our suppliers to keep bad actors from entering our factories in the first place. Consolidating our suppliers made that an attainable goal.
(74) Today, an extremely efffective shield is in place against vendors sending us things we do not want. We have used this approach to screen out lead, mercury, perfluoronated alkyl surfactants, and other persistent bioaccumulating toxic substances and chemicals. What has all this cost us?
Nothing. Annual savings run about three hundred thousand dollars. By consolidating our supplier base, the fewer but larger contracts allow us to enjoy discounts we had not seen before. And even more important, our protocol has given our suppliers a very good reason (and a tool they can borrow) to take a hard look at _their_ suppliers, setting up a ripple effect that has spread, as more companies are motivated by enlighted self-interest to invest in benign even green, chemistry.
(78) Last year Wal-Mart announced an impressive array of energy and efficiency initiatives that came from their companywide sustainability plan, which is somewhat similar to our own Mission Zero.
(79) Dell, the computer maker, is another example of what can be accomplished when a company decides that just compliance isn’t enough
(99) Could they sell a product like that: Solar-Made™ carpet, something the world had never seen before. And their answer was, Bring it on!
…. All the talking, all the advertising and marketing in the world, could not have brought that recognition without the actual _doing_. When I say the goodwill of the marketplace has just been astonishing, that’s what I mean.
(106) So you see, decisions made in the round are right and smart. In the new thinking of sustainability, “extraneous” factors like market presence, reputation, and leadership are every bit as real and positive as the hidden subsidies to fossil fules are real and negative.
NB: The chapter on renewables is completely out of date as the prices of solar/wind have declined so drastically since 2011. The only thing still pertinent is probably the landfill gas story - diverting local landfill methane to power their factory, reducing emissions (and smells) while increasing the lifetime of the landfill and providing income to the town.
(107) I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation one day that showed the United States could have met its Kyoto commitment, a 7 percent reduction in greenhouse gases, on landfill gas alone, at a profit to everyone
(111) Consider the nine most energy-intensive industries - aluminum, metal casting, chemicals, oil refining, glass, cement, mining, paper, and steel …
(122) This is the dawn of a carbohydrate economy that will complement - someday, perhaps replace - the hydrocarbon economy. It evolves right alongside solar energy, leading to the solar-carbohydrate economy of the future, as we get ready for the end of oil.
(126) Recyclebank https://recyclebank.com/ - municipalities contract for a recycling system that measures what and how much is recycled and pays customers back with currency redeemable at participating local businesses
(128) "When you take out the carbon, you take out the cost." Tim Riordan, vice president for supply chain, Interface, Inc.
(136) It takes about 31,000 BTUs of energy to move a ton of freight by air. Move that same ton by truck and the energy intensity falls to about 2,300 BTUs. What about going by rail? It drops to an astonishingly low 370 BTUs per ton mile!
(139) According to the EPA, trucking accounts for about 27 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions here in the United States.
(148) When you take the carbon out, profits go up. Efficiency equals profits, profits equal good jobs, and good jobs mean a strong economy.
(151) … for an industrial company that really acts as if there is no away, everyone lives downstream.
(154) After all, nothing fails like success because success doesn’t prepare one for adversity.
(155) Our own culture shift in the direction of sustainability has many components. It begins with constant emphasis on safety in the workplace. It extends to organizing women's networks within the company, to counterbalance any good old boy networks still in place.
NB: Anderson mentions the importance of involving women in decision-making much more than just once
(156) Interface is a very small pebble in the world’s economy, something like 1/60,000 of global commerce in 2008. But our consulting arm, Interface-RAISE, has worked with some of the world’s largest corporations to help them adopt sounder, more competitive business practices.
(165) Georgia Tech School of Industrial and Systems Engineering chair for Natural Systems
(166) Early in our mountain climb we embraced our environmental initiatives under the label EcoSense. We developed Ecometrics for measuring progress and later, Sociometrics. Essentially, those together formed a road map to sustainability and a report card to show how far we have on our journey.
(167) [October 2005, Wal-Mart CEO Lee] Scott detailed Wal-Mart’s simple, straightforward environmental goals.
1. To be supplied by 100 percent renewable energy.
2. To create zero waste.
3. To sell products that sustain our resources and environment.
(170) She [InterfaceRAISE client] stopped a forklift driver [on the factory floor] who was transporting a big roll of carpet and asked, “What do you do here?”
“Ma’am,” the truck driver, James Wisener, said, “I come to work every day to help save the earth.”
Stunned by his answer, she started probing that forklift driver with more questions. Finally, James said, “Ma’am, I don’t want to be rude, but if I don’t get this roll of carpet to the next process right now, our waste and emissions numbers are going to go way up. I’ve gotta go."
(179) The numbers are different for every installation, but in general, 80 percent of the wear [on carpets] happens to just 20 percent of the carpet.
NB: Pareto
(185) Janine Benyus from Biomimicry, natural design rules:
Nature runs on sunlight.
Nature uses only the energy it needs.
Nature fits form to function.
Nature recycles everything.
Nature rewards cooperation.
Nature banks on diversity.
Nature demands local expertise.
Nature curbs excesses from within.
Nature taps the power of limits.
(189) There is a well-known environmental impact equation popularized by Paul and Anne Ehrlich that declares I = P x A x T. I is environmental impact (the bigger, the worse), P is population, A is affluence, and T is technology.
(189 - 190) But what if the characteristics of T were improved, not just here and there, but with its very basis fundamentally changed to incorporate the technologies of the next industrial revolution? Renewable instead of extractive? Cyclical rather than linear take-make-waste? Focused on resource efficiency rather than labor productivity? Benign in their effects on the biosphere, rather than abusive? And what if they emulated natural processes, in which there are no wastes? Mightn’t it be possible to restate the environmental impact equation is I = P x A/T2?
Move T from the numerator to the denominator and we can change the world. The mathematically minded will see this immediately. Now, the more technology of the right kind, the better. By harnessing technology to reduce environmental impacts, the technophiles and the technophobes, the environmentalists and the industrialists could be aligned and allied in their efforts to redesign and reinvent commerce (and save civilization).
Such a transformation will not happen overnight. There must surely be a transitional equation: I = P x A x T1/T2.
(192) There were no incentives, no tax breaks, no subsidies, mandates, or government agencies forcing us to do a thing. In fact, from our experience with the landfill gas project (the one the Environmental Protection Agency said was way too small to work), I’d say we were leading them.
(196) The status quo is an opiate.
(202) [1997 vote in Senate against Kyoto agreement] Senators were terrified that reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent over the next fifteen years would just cripple American industry. And that sounded truly dire. Who could be in favor of something like that?
For a little context, it is worthwhile restating that as Congress gave up and ran for cover, Interface was cutting its net greenhouse gas emissions not by 7 percent, but by 71 percent (in absolute tons) within twelve years, while our sales were increasing by two thirds and our earnings were doubling. Interface wasn’t crippled by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions; we profited from it. So that congressional terror was pretty much stuffed with hot air, lobbyist cash, and so much dead straw.
(204) 2006 - Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP)
(205) We were planning a step-by-step campaign to achieve nothing less than a 90 percent reduction in US greenhouse gases by 2050, with an interim 30 percent reduction by 2020 (the year Interface expects to be at zero emissions).
NB: Interface reached zero emissions in 2019
(207) Mr President: In your first 100 days….
take the lead by announcing that the largest single consumer of energy and generator of greenhouse gases, the United States government, will become climate neutral - zero net carbon emissions - by 2030. (The government’s own Mission Zero!)
(231) The Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development (ISTD) has evolved into a university wide advocate for sustainability. Like our own Mission Zero, it is guided by a long-range (in their case, twenty-year) plan to achieve sustainability at Georgia Tech.
(233) The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) - https://www.aashe.org/
https://www.aashe.org/calendar/
(236) To help with the search [for a green MBA], the Aspen Institute publishes a biennial survey called Beyond Grey Pinstripes. Its Center for Business Education publishes this ranking of business schools to spotlight MBA programs that integrat social and environmental stewardship into their curricula and research.
(237) The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has created its Institute for Global Environmental Leadership, and Interface holds a postion on its Advisory Board.
(241) Why should Christians care about the environment? I believe the signatories of the Evangelical Climate Initiative would say creation care has nothing at all to do with politics and everything to do with the fundamental responsibilities of faith:
because we should care for the world as God does;
because God has commanded us to be good stewards of the earth;
because it is a way of showing love for our neighbors, even if, from a climate perspective, our neighbors live in flood-prone lowlands or parched deserts thousands of miles away.
NB: Golden Rule applied to use and practice
(246-247) Since 1996, our baseline year, Interface has cut its net greenhouse gas emissions by 71 percent (in absolute tons).
During the same span, our sales have increased by 60 percent. Carbon intensity, relative to sales, decline by 82 percent, and profits doubled. As profit margins expanded, our shares went from two dollars in 2003 to twenty dollars in 2007, before yielding to the worldwide market sell-off of 2008.
Our global use of renewable energy went from 0 to 28 percent. Renewable energy provides electricity to power 8 or our 10 factories or 89 percent of total electricity.
Our consumption of fossil fuels per square yard of carpet declined 60 percent.
The energy content of our carpets - the total number of BTUs required to make one square yard - fell by 44 percent.
Our companywide waste elimination measures saved us a cumulative $405 million in avoided costs, paying for the transformation of our company. Sustainability has been self-funding.
Water intake per production unit was reduced 75 percent in modular carpet facilities, 47 percent in broadloom facilities, 72 percent overall, thanks to conservation efforts and process changes.
We’ve kept 175 million pounds of old carpet out of the landfills, and reduced our generation of scrap for the landfills by 78 percent.
The percentage of recycled and biobased materials used to manufacture our products worldwide has increased from 0.5 percent in 1996 to 24 percent in 2008, and it is increasing rapidly with new technologies and the development of reverse logistics.
Since 2003, we’ve manufactured and sold over 83 million square yards of Cool Carpet with no net global warming effect - zero - to the earth.
(249) Setting the stage for the Brasstown Valley meeting [in 2008], our CEO since 2001, Dan Hendrix, observed, “Many are bracing for an economic slowdown.”
Was that an understatement!
“But,” Dan continued, “I feel the time is ripe to energize our associates around our most powerful, unifying element, which is also our most compelling strategic advantage - sustainability."
(250) Incorporating sustainability as a defining element has greatly improved our competitiveness - a good thing in hard times. It has enhanced our brand and our reputation, reduced our costs, and boosted our productivity. It has awarded us access to the very best talent, energized our entire company from the factory floor to the corner office, and spurred innovation.
(253) The appreciative inquiry approach developed by Dr David Cooperrider of Case Western Reserve
(257) “_Economic_ degradation,” she [Majora Carter] said, “begets _environmental_ degradation. And environmental degradation begets _social_ degradation. The linkage is absolute. No exceptions. It’s not a menu. You can’t pick and choose which one of those three you’d like to address. You’ve got to address them all.”
(269) I = P x A/T2
Let’s revisit it and ask ourselves how to make that equation reflect the new worldview I am describing. What about capital A for affluence? To me it suggests that affluence is an end in itself. but what if we thought of it as lowercase, a, suggesting that it’s merely a means to a different end, and that that end is happiness?
We might then rewrite the equation again as ….
I = P x a/T2 x H
… in which H stands for happiness, the real end we seek.
… The old, flawed view of reality holds to the belief that business exists to make a profit, when we know in our hearts that business makes a profit to exist, and it must surely exist for some higher purpose.
(280) The problem this Pac-Man process produces, as Bernard Lietaer, a European economist who helped create the euro, has shown, is that efficiency and resilience in any system are inversely related. So there is a tradeoff between the two. Efficiency, pushed too far, produces a loss of resilience. When a big investment bank fails (read, Lehman Brothers), a big part of the system goes with it. That’s lack of resilience.
Lietaer advocates looking to natural ecosystems for the model of redesigning and balancing, and thus optimizing, the tradeoff between resilience and efficiency in the financial system. Ecosystems specialize in self-organizing resilience, based on diversity.
NB: efficient resilience, anti-fragility
Harvard Business School Case Studies
Interface's Evergreen Services Agreement (2003)
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=29680
InterfaceRAISE: Sustainability Consulting (2012)
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=40509
Interface: The Journey Toward Carbon Negative (2022)
https://store.hbr.org/product/interface-the-journey-toward-carbon-negative/W10C83
or https://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/product/W10C83-PDF-ENG
(246-247) Since 1996, our baseline year, Interface has cut its net greenhouse gas emissions by 71 percent (in absolute tons).
During the same span, our sales have increased by 60 percent. Carbon intensity, relative to sales, decline by 82 percent, and profits doubled. As profit margins expanded, our shares went from two dollars in 2003 to twenty dollars in 2007, before yielding to the worldwide market sell-off of 2008.
Our global use of renewable energy went from 0 to 28 percent. Renewable energy provides electricity to power 8 or our 10 factories or 89 percent of total electricity.
Our consumption of fossil fuels per square yard of carpet declined 60 percent.
The energy content of our carpets - the total number of BTUs required to make one square yard - fell by 44 percent.
Our companywide waste elimination measures saved us a cumulative $405 million in avoided costs, paying for the transformation of our company. Sustainability has been self-funding.
Water intake per production unit was reduced 75 percent in modular carpet facilities, 47 percent in broadloom facilities, 72 percent overall, thanks to conservation efforts and process changes.
We’ve kept 175 million pounds of old carpet out of the landfills, and reduced our generation of scrap for the landfills by 78 percent.
The percentage of recycled and biobased materials used to manufacture our products worldwide has increased from 0.5 percent in 1996 to 24 percent in 2008, and it is increasing rapidly with new technologies and the development of reverse logistics.
Since 2003, we’ve manufactured and sold over 83 million square yards of Cool Carpet with no net global warming effect - zero - to the earth.
(249) Setting the stage for the Brasstown Valley meeting [in 2008], our CEO since 2001, Dan Hendrix, observed, “Many are bracing for an economic slowdown.”
Was that an understatement!
“But,” Dan continued, “I feel the time is ripe to energize our associates around our most powerful, unifying element, which is also our most compelling strategic advantage - sustainability."
(250) Incorporating sustainability as a defining element has greatly improved our competitiveness - a good thing in hard times. It has enhanced our brand and our reputation, reduced our costs, and boosted our productivity. It has awarded us access to the very best talent, energized our entire company from the factory floor to the corner office, and spurred innovation.
(253) The appreciative inquiry approach developed by Dr David Cooperrider of Case Western Reserve
(257) “_Economic_ degradation,” she [Majora Carter] said, “begets _environmental_ degradation. And environmental degradation begets _social_ degradation. The linkage is absolute. No exceptions. It’s not a menu. You can’t pick and choose which one of those three you’d like to address. You’ve got to address them all.”
(269) I = P x A/T2
Let’s revisit it and ask ourselves how to make that equation reflect the new worldview I am describing. What about capital A for affluence? To me it suggests that affluence is an end in itself. but what if we thought of it as lowercase, a, suggesting that it’s merely a means to a different end, and that that end is happiness?
We might then rewrite the equation again as ….
I = P x a/T2 x H
… in which H stands for happiness, the real end we seek.
… The old, flawed view of reality holds to the belief that business exists to make a profit, when we know in our hearts that business makes a profit to exist, and it must surely exist for some higher purpose.
(280) The problem this Pac-Man process produces, as Bernard Lietaer, a European economist who helped create the euro, has shown, is that efficiency and resilience in any system are inversely related. So there is a tradeoff between the two. Efficiency, pushed too far, produces a loss of resilience. When a big investment bank fails (read, Lehman Brothers), a big part of the system goes with it. That’s lack of resilience.
Lietaer advocates looking to natural ecosystems for the model of redesigning and balancing, and thus optimizing, the tradeoff between resilience and efficiency in the financial system. Ecosystems specialize in self-organizing resilience, based on diversity.
NB: efficient resilience, anti-fragility
Harvard Business School Case Studies
Interface's Evergreen Services Agreement (2003)
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=29680
InterfaceRAISE: Sustainability Consulting (2012)
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=40509
Interface: The Journey Toward Carbon Negative (2022)
https://store.hbr.org/product/interface-the-journey-toward-carbon-negative/W10C83
or https://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/product/W10C83-PDF-ENG
Previously
Interface from Living Zero to Climate Takeback
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