Business Lessons from a Radical Industrialist
Reading Ray C. Anderson’s Business Memoir in 2019
When the late Ray C. Anderson first presented the idea of sustainability to the guys on Wall Street, they responded, “its good ethics but bad business”.
Oh Boy! Did he prove them wrong!
Business Lessons from a Radical Industrialist* is Ray C. Anderson’s account of he was able to steer his commercial carpet making company, Interface to achieve environmental, social and financial sustainability. By 2011, Interface had cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 94 per cent, cut fossil fuel consumption by 60 perfect as well as cut water and water use each by 80 per cent. At the same, they had invented and patented new machines, materials and manufacturing processes. As a result, they increased sales by 66 per cent, doubled their earnings and raised their profit margins. Anderson has also been dubbed one of America’s greenest CEO by Time
In 1994, Anderson struggled to respond to a customer’s persistent question about what Interface was doing about the environment. While he was tempted to revert to the obvious “ We comply with environmental laws” he felt that this time around, that answer would not cut it. Serendipitously, a copy of reading Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce arrived on his desk as he grappled with this question and the rest is history.
From the age 60, he was able to spend the next fourteen years of his life, leading Interface to make zero negative impact on the planet by 2020 dubbed Mission Zero by scaling up Mount Sustainability. Interface achieved Mission Zero in 2019 and is working on continuing this trend with its new mission, Climate Take Back.
The book gives a detailed account of how Interface employees contributed to the company was able to detach itself from being oil-dependent into a sustainable business despite the current counternarrative. His mid-course correction was not a one-man show by citing anecdotes and quipping his colleagues and employees at different cadres. Anderson dedicates each chapter to the seven issues that were important to redesign the carpet business by recycling synthetic materials and water into valuable raw materials. At the end of each chapter, figures and graphs are included to show their progress. He also does not shy away from including the tough business conditions Interface went through including competition and 2007–8 financial crisis Iand how they managed to remain true to their sustainability cause.
Readers will be equally impressed by Interface’s sustainability culture among their employees. Ray recounts an instance when an early InterfaceRAISE (their consulting arm) client stopped a forklift driver at one of their factories to ask him what he did at Interface. He simply replied, “Ma’am, I come to work every day to help save the planet.” Stunned by his answer, she started to ask him a few more questions. He eventually said, “Ma’am I don’t want to be rude, but if I don't get this roll of carpet to the next process right now, our waste and emission numbers are going to go way up. I’ve gotta go.”
Truly, at some points, the book may be rendered dry and rambly. Nonetheless, Business Lessons from a Radical Industrialist will be appreciated by readers who are curious about the behind the scenes of Interface and what it takes to transform a brown company into a green one. This book and Anderson’s legacy, in general, are pivotal in the ongoing debate on the influence and ability of large corporations to make meaningful sustainable impact without greenwashing and eco-consumerism.
Ray C. Anderson was living proof that it is never late to make mid-course correction at any change professionally and personally. Though this edition was published in 2011, it should be placed in the hands of all the naysayers who still believe that profit and sustainability are mutually exclusive.
Notable quotes:
“Everbody talks about global warming and climate change. But what do those phrases really to the way most people? The answer is, not much. I wanted to find a way to attack those big difficult problems, not from the top down but from the bottom up, You don’t experience firsthand experiences going extinct every day, but everybody deals with garbage, trash, taxes and high prices they encounter in stores. I knew a big part of those prices came from companies using virgin materials: new gas, new oil, new metals and glass.” -Ron Gonen, former CEO RecycleBank
*Previously published in hardcover as Confessions of a Radical Industrialist.
