What are some of the things you’ve done to make Interface completely cradle to cradle?
Well, we don’t use the term cradle to cradle, but that’s another story. The company is my third child after my two natural daughters. Twenty one years into the company’s existence, the question [of sustainability] came. I spent a year or two creating a plan, a mountain of sustainability, a mountain like Everest but much much harder to climb. Waste is the first face of the mountain that we tackled. Over the years we’ve saved over 400 million in waste avoidance, which has paid for all the rest of the mountain climb. The second face of the mountain is emissions. We have to make to sure whatever we emit is harmless to the environment, which means we have to work upstream with suppliers. So that’s a demanding thing to work with an entire supply chain to make sure everything that comes into our factory has been screened. The third face is energy, to make sure factories operate on 100% renewable energy. We have to concentrate on energy efficiencies first, and then harness renewable energy. Th
