Thursday, October 27, 2011

Ray Anderson and Interface

In one of my classes today we watched a video on a company called Interface which was founded in 1973 to produce the first free-lay carpet tiles in America. Their former CEO, Ray Anderson, led a change effort that had to do with sustainability. After reading The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken he completely changed the company internally to become more sustainable and I think a lot more companies (Walmart for example) are becoming eco-friendly because of the success that his company had. In 2009, Interface was more than halfway towards the vision of "Mission Zero", which means the company wanted to produce zero waste by using recycled products to manufacture recyclable products. 

I think it's becoming more and more important for companies to implement sustainable programs and behaviors into their businesses because if they don't, we're going to have a lot less time on this planet than most people think. It's impossible to run linear business plans (make, sell, throw away) in a non-linear world forever. Eventually we're not going to have enough resources or enough room to put our waste and I think that starting change projects that put sustainability practices into place are a lot more important today than they used to be, mostly because we know now that our current procedures won't work forever. Anyone have a different opinion or any thoughts on this issue?

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Daniel Changelon

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