Think of a green businessman and Ray Anderson isn't likely to be the first to come to mind. He's not a fresh-out-of-business-school, Silicon Valley visionary — he's well over 70 years old, and his accent marks him as a lifelong Georgian. He doesn't make solar panels or wind turbines or cellulosic biofuel. His company, Interface, manufactures carpet tiles, which is about as ordinary as you can get.
But Fortune has described Anderson as 'America's greenest CEO,' and the title fits, because there is no one else in the corporate world who has so taken to heart the essential lessons of sustainability — and then put them into practice. 'From my experience, it's a false choice between the economy and ecology,' Anderson told me recently. 'We can have both — and we have to have both."
In 1994, after reading a book titled The Ecology of Commerce, Anderson charged his engineers with calculating the company's environmental footprint. He was shocked to learn that it took over one million pounds of raw materials each year to support the business. Since that time, Anderson has put Interface on the path to sustainability, ruthlessly pursuing efficiencies and increasing recycling. Anderson says, "Our products are the best they have ever been, and so are our people. People need a higher purpose to identify with, and this is the highest purpose of all."
Read more at TIME.com
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