Interface Chairman Ray Anderson Remembered

By Alex Wilson and Nadav Malin

Inspiring. Gracious. Inviting. Each time we met Ray Anderson and heard him speak, we were impressed again and again by how fully he manifested those qualities. The green building world lost one of its biggest heroes and certainly its evangelist yesterday with the loss of Ray Anderson, founder and chairman of carpet maker Interface, Inc., to cancer.

We first got to know Ray in 1994 when the two of us were in Atlanta for a charrette about greening Habitat for Humanity home designs. On the evening before that event, we invited participants and a few others to join us in a conversation about the publication we had just launched two years earlier, Environmental Building News, and what it should become. Ray showed up and introduced himself in a very humble way; it wasn’t until the next day that we learned he ran a billion-dollar corporation!

That meeting took place shortly after Ray had read Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce and had that “spear in the chest” experience that he spoke about so eloquently in public and private settings. That experience launched him on a quest to transform the carpet company he had founded into a model of sustainable enterprise. Interface was a pioneer in commercializing carpet tiles, and became a pioneer in seeking ways to manufacture and remanufacture those tiles with zero net impact.

Ray established and followed a vision for Interface. He challenged his team to learn the science behind his quest to scale “Mount Sustainability” and follow that science, even when it put him at odds with some of his friends and advisors in the green building industry.

While Ray’s immediate focus was his own company, in the process of transforming that company he spurred action throughout the carpet industry, leading a healthy competition for the greenest practices among carpet manufacturers. Today the carpet industry is, in many ways, leading the building industry in the pursuit of sustainability.

Ray went beyond even the building industry to inspire a wide range of businesses in advancing sustainability. He co-chaired Clinton’s President’s Council on Sustainable Development and Obama’s Presidential Climate Action Plan, and used those platforms as well as his two books and many hundreds of speaking engagements to pass on his vision and inspiration to thousands of business leaders. As a successful capitalist who preached of the responsibility—and opportunity—for business to lead the way, he legitimized the cause of sustainability in business circles at a time when most companies were inclined to ignore or dismiss it.

While it may be many decades before Ray’s company achieves the level of sustainability that Ray so often spoke of, it is because of Ray that that effort is being made. His company, the carpet industry, the green building industry, and indeed our entire country are so much the better for Ray’s dedication, vision, and skill. He will be sorely missed.