Event

Ray Anderson: Earth-and Profit-Friendly Business

In 1994, Ray Andersonfounder and chairman of Interface, the worlds largest manufacturer of modular carpetset an audacious goal for his company: to completely eliminate its negative environmental impact by 2020. Carpet-making has long been a toxic, petroleum-based process, but since undertaking this 'ascent to sustainability' Interface has cut greenhouse gas emissions by 82 percent; cut fossil-fuel consumption by 60 percent; invented and patented new machines, materials, and manufacturing processesand increased sales by 66 percent, doubling earnings and raising profit margins. Anderson, named one of Time magazine's Heroes of the Environment in 2007, and author of Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People PurposeDoing Business by Respecting the Earth (with Robin White), is leading again by challenging all of industry to share this original goal, and by proving that profit and sustainability are not mutually exclusive. Presented by the Town Hall Center for Civic Life, with Elliott Bay Book Company.