Ray Anderson, founder of carpet giant Interface, explains in Confessions of a Radical Industrialist that his environmental epiphany was like a "spear in the chest." Delivered to him by reindeer in Paul Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce, Anderson relates that the point of the epiphany "felt just like the point of a spear driven straight into my heart." The Reader's Digest of Ray's reindeer epiphany is that 29 reindeer were released on St. Matthew island during World War II as an emergency food stock for U.S. Coast Guard personnel stationed there. With plenty of grazing opportunities and no predators, the reindeer shot past the 1,350 carrying capacity of the island, to some 6,000. But by 1966, the island was barren and only 42 reindeer remained. Today there are none.
St. Matthew island stands as metaphor for the earth at large. For Anderson, it was a poignant connection that made him understand that his activity as a carpet manufacturing industrialist was contributing to the condition where we were "chewing up resources faster than the earth could renew them." Interface was contributing to the overgrazing of our natural resources (petroleum being one of the primary resources used in the manufacture of carpet), possibly to the point that we overshoot the carrying capacity of the earth. He goes on to say that he "stood indicted as a plunderer, a destroyer of the earth, a thief, stealing my own grandchildren's future."
But, instead of dragging up, closing down his business and finding a more benign way to spend his time, Anderson set about rethinking and retooling the Interface enterprise from the framework of the epiphany. What is so likable about his story is that he is a captain of industry, he is profit driven, and he does believe in the ability of business to bring about the changes necessary to confront the challenges we face. What's more, he's committed to the grand experiment to have Interface remain a vibrant, profitable enterprise, even as it reduces its carbon footprint to nothing (by 2020 according to Interface's Mission Zero goal). It's critical to have people inside the system figuring out, and demonstrating, how the system can carry us forward. As Anderson recognizes: "The strongest institution in the world has to take the lead. That is not the church, it is not education, and it is not the government, either. It is business and industry." He stayed in to effect change from a position of maximum impact.
What is also to like about this story is the powerful ripple effect that can be created by a single person, a single thought. Paul Hawken laid down a story in a book. Ray Anderson read this story of some reindeer on an island and radically transformed a one billion dollar a year company as a result. Doug McMillon, CEO of Wal-Mart's Sam's Club and part of the $300 billion Wal-Mart organization, said after touring Interface: "seeing the creativity applied to establish more sustainable practices made it undeniable that the rest of us can do the same. We don't have to spend time wondering if we can do something. Instead, we can move on to figure out how." And there is tangible evidence that Wal-Mart is figuring out how.
So within this story, you trace from the ink on a couple of pages, through the mind at the front of a 1 billion dollar enterprise, to the policies and new thinking of a $300 billion enterprise.
Confessions is a good read for those who contemplate action.
Photo: by Brooks Kraft/Corbis on radical.industrialist's flickr page
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