By From all of us
Posted on Aug. 10, 2011. Listed in:
Ray Anderson , who founded the company Interface, and who was widely recognised for his work on sustainability in business, died yesterday after a long , almost two year battle with cancer. he was 77. Ray was one of the leading proponents of the place of sustainability in business. The company he founded in 1973 -Interface- grew to be a $1 billion company and the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpet.
Ray Anderson's recent book was reviewed here on Celsias and he was kind enough to give away signed copies to some of our readers His company began with this exacting goal of sustainability which was to inform their journey:
“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.”Taking-making-wasting is the linear process which describes much of our industry and which Interface is set on changing. Anderson uses the metaphor of mountain climbing, up the seven faces of Mount Sustainability. The first face is zero waste. Tracking down and eliminating waste has incidentally proved highly profitable. Anderson describes it as “the engine that will pull the whole train”.
He provided leadership and inspiration for many in the environmental field not least because it has not been that common for highly successful businesses and a desire to leave no serious carbon footprint on the earth to be combined in one person.
“The industrial system takes too much, extracting and frittering away Earth’s natural capital on wants, not needs,” he wrote “It wastes too much. It abuses too much. It takes stuff and makes stuff that very quickly ends up in landfills or incinerators—more waste, more abuse, more pollution…
“I believe that a sustainable society depends totally and absolutely on a new mind-set to deeply embrace ethical values. Values that, along with an enlightened self-interest, drive us to make new and better decisions.
“I also believe that it doesn’t happen quickly … it happens one mind at a time, one organization at a time, one building, one company, one community, one region, one new, clean technology, one industry, one supply chain at a time … until the entire industrial system has been transformed into a sustainable system, existing ethically in balance with Earth’s natural systems, upon which every living thing is utterly dependent.”
Anderson used to finish his speeches with a poem which he said was written by someone who worked at Interface and was inspired by Anderson's environmental mission. It's a lovely poem and is perhaps a fitting way to say a huge Thank-you to a man who has truly made a difference.
Tomorrow’s Child
Without a name, an unseen face
and knowing not your time nor place
Tomorrow’s Child, though yet unborn,
I met you first last Tuesday morn.
A wise friend introduced us two,
and through his sobering point of view
I saw a day that you would see,
a day for you, but not for me.
Knowing you has changed my thinking,
for I never had an inkling
That perhaps the things I do
might someday, somehow, threaten you.
Tomorrow’s Child, my daughter-son
I’m afraid I’ve just begun
To think of you and of your good,
Though always having known I should.
Begin I will to weigh the cost
of what I squander, what is lost
If ever I forget that you
will someday come to live here too.
