David Wilson
4th November 2003, 11:24 PM
Features/The Green CEO
In the Future, People Like Me Will Go to Jail: Ray Anderson is on a mission to clean up American businesses--starting with his own. Can a Georgia carpet mogul save the planet?
Gwen Kinkead Reporter Associate Eileen P. Gunn
05/24/1999
Fortune Magazine
Time Inc.
Page 190+
(Copyright Time Inc. 1999)
Last year, on an October evening as stifling as a greenhouse, CEOs from half a dozen of the world's largest companies gathered at the U.S. Embassy in London. At the lectern before them stood a man of medium build with lean, handsome features and a Georgia drawl: Ray Anderson, the king of carpet tile.
Anderson is founder, chairman, and CEO of Interface, the $1- billion-a-year leader in this unglamorous sector of the floor- covering industry; he introduced himself that night as one of the tribe, "a captain of industry, an American hero." But Anderson quickly made it clear that mutual admiration wasn't the main agenda. In a voice fired by evangelical zeal, he described a breakthrough four years earlier when his life--both personal and professional--had utterly changed. "I had a revelation," he told his audience, "about what industry is doing to our planet. I stood convicted as a plunderer of the earth."
The CEOs shifted in their seats as Anderson explained that he now considered the technologies of the Industrial Revolution to be "voracious," a form of collective suicide. "In the future," he declared, "people like me will go to jail." Then he rolled out his central theme: "Interface of Atlanta, my company, is changing course to become sustainable--to grow without damaging the earth and manufacture without pollution, waste, or fossil fuels. If we get it right, our company and our supply chain will never have to take another drop of oil." Leveling a finger at Chris Fay, then CEO of the British unit of Royal Dutch/Shell, he added, "We want to put you out of business."
Ray Anderson..eco-HERO (http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/lmarks/Links/GreenCEO.html)
In the Future, People Like Me Will Go to Jail: Ray Anderson is on a mission to clean up American businesses--starting with his own. Can a Georgia carpet mogul save the planet?
Gwen Kinkead Reporter Associate Eileen P. Gunn
05/24/1999
Fortune Magazine
Time Inc.
Page 190+
(Copyright Time Inc. 1999)
Last year, on an October evening as stifling as a greenhouse, CEOs from half a dozen of the world's largest companies gathered at the U.S. Embassy in London. At the lectern before them stood a man of medium build with lean, handsome features and a Georgia drawl: Ray Anderson, the king of carpet tile.
Anderson is founder, chairman, and CEO of Interface, the $1- billion-a-year leader in this unglamorous sector of the floor- covering industry; he introduced himself that night as one of the tribe, "a captain of industry, an American hero." But Anderson quickly made it clear that mutual admiration wasn't the main agenda. In a voice fired by evangelical zeal, he described a breakthrough four years earlier when his life--both personal and professional--had utterly changed. "I had a revelation," he told his audience, "about what industry is doing to our planet. I stood convicted as a plunderer of the earth."
The CEOs shifted in their seats as Anderson explained that he now considered the technologies of the Industrial Revolution to be "voracious," a form of collective suicide. "In the future," he declared, "people like me will go to jail." Then he rolled out his central theme: "Interface of Atlanta, my company, is changing course to become sustainable--to grow without damaging the earth and manufacture without pollution, waste, or fossil fuels. If we get it right, our company and our supply chain will never have to take another drop of oil." Leveling a finger at Chris Fay, then CEO of the British unit of Royal Dutch/Shell, he added, "We want to put you out of business."
Ray Anderson..eco-HERO (http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/lmarks/Links/GreenCEO.html)