Carpet tile manufacturer Interface is celebrating 10 years of progress on its path to sustainability. “The vision is not just to change our company and eliminate our environmental footprint, but, through the power of our influence on others, to become restorative,” says Ray Anderson, the company’s chief executive officer. “In nine years, at the end of 2003, we progressed about one-third of the way from where we started in 1994, toward our goal of zero footprint – what we call the top of Mount Sustainability.”
Milestone achieved include reducing carbon intensity by one third; reducing greenhouse gas emissions by forty six percent; reducing the number of smokestacks reduced by thirty three percent; reducing the number of effluent pipes by forty seven percent and cutting water usage by forty seven percent.
This reduced footprint is embodied in every product manufactured. As life cycle assessments are performed on the products, the company is moving toward evaluating its manufacturing facilities on the basis of the cumulative impact of all the products a facility produces - this being done worldwide.
“The remaining two-thirds of Mount Sustainability is twice as high as the one-third we have traversed,” says Anderson. “Looking ahead to the next 10 years at Interface, if we are successful in executing our plan waste will be halved again; energy will be further reduced in relative terms by half again; half the remaining energy will come from renewable sources (photovoltaics, wind, biomass); the number of smokestacks and effluent pipes remaining will be halved; half of all materials will be post consumer recycled, including a portion from nylon 6,6, said by some to be commercially impossible and Interface as a whole will be climate neutral.”
Anderson says the Evergreen Service Agreement will be a major factor and a big competitive advantage as the company moves toward selling the “service” its products deliver, while retaining ownership in the products themselves, along with responsibility for recycling them.
“ReEntry” – our reverse logistics and closed loop recycling initiative – will become a way of life,” he notes.
For more information on Interface’s environmental initiatives, visit www.interfacesustainability.com.
Source: Building Products News.