Inspiring the Business Case for Sustainability

It’s tough to not like a guy with a southern drawl and who calls himself a “recovered plunderer.”

Here’s Ray Anderson of Interface from a TED Talk last month. I’m consistently blown away by his vision of more than a decade ago that business needed to shift its thinking to protect our finite resources. As he says, what business is/was doing should be considered the “theft of our children.”

Some make the argument that its easy for big business to tackle sustainability because of their limitless resources, but I say those same organizations are behemoths to navigate . It seems to me that if an organization like Interface can make a Mid Course Correction then the little guys should  be just as nimble and innovative.

For stat fiends the highlights are:

  • Net GHG down 82%
  • $400,000,000 in costs savings due to waste stream recovery
  • and Interface’s BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) 0 carbon emissions by 2020 – Anderson says they’re halfway there

You be the judge.

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