"Everybody has but one story to tell -- his or her own story," Interface chairman Ray Anderson said to about 200 USGBC members at a luncheon across the street from the Greenbuild conference. "My remarks come from my story. And every good story begins with a question."

The Greenbuild Executive Roundtable brought together leading CEOs in corporations, higher education and non-profit organizations, to share what sustainability means to them, how they make green decisions, and what role employees can play in the process.

Anderson invited this influential audience to consider a question: "You have been chosen to take a space voyage that will span many generations. What will you bring with you on our spacecraft to ensure a successful voyage?"

When a corporate green team recently was challenged to answer the question, Anderson recalls that not one of the 10 teams named a product made by their own company.

"We on a spacecraft making an intergenerational voyage to a distant time. How would it feel to be working for a company whose own products don't belong on Spaceship Earth?" Anderson inquired. "Is what you do worth doing?"

Aboutface

Carpet manufacturing is historically a toxic, polluting industry that consumes petroleum and produces landfill waste in large quantities. Interface was no exception.

Paul Hawken's book "The Ecology of Commerce" inspired Anderson to make what he calls a mid-course correction at Interface. That was in 1994, when the USGBC was in its infancy.

In "Mission Zero" at Interface, Anderson challenged his employees to achieve zero environmental impact by 2020. Today the company is 60 percent of the way to that goal. The company now manufactures climate-neutral carpet and has made dramatic reductions in energy, carbon and waste.

"Cost savings from waste avoidance -- some $419 million -- have funded the entire sustainability initiative, rendering the mission self-funding," Anderson said.

The Interface story is widely cited as a model of corporate transformation to sustainable manufacturing. The ubiquity of carpet in buildings has helped to make this a high-profile case study among green architects and designers.

"By 'sustainable,' we mean taking from the Earth only what can be naturally and rapidly renewed by the Earth with energy from the Sun and doing no harm to the biosphere," Anderson explained.

"By 'sustainable,' we mean taking from the Earth only what can be naturally and rapidly renewed by the Earth with energy from the Sun and doing no harm to the biosphere."
--Ray Anderson, Chairman, Interface Inc.

Our choice

He then posed another query: "Do you know the question your life's story will seek to answer?"

If we so choose, our life's question can be, What can I do for the Earth?

"The right choice implies so much transformational change," Anderson urged, "that an era of unprecedented creativity and innovation is called for in every organization, including the USGBC, because we have so far to go for a truly green-built environment."

Every one of us has the power to influence others, even our competitors, to be more sustainable, he said. In so doing, we can go beyond zero and make our organizations restorative.

If Mission Zero were applied to our built environment, Anderson deduced, it would translate into no net new environmental footprint, so this is no time for green building's leadership to relax.

In his experience, change is instigated by bold leaders who set extremely high aspirations.

"If a petroleum-intensive company can do this, anybody can. And if anybody can, it follows that everybody can," Anderson proclaimed. "Thank you, and lead on."