Interface, Inc. Chairman and Founder Ray Anderson has outlined the company’s plan to become a carbon neutral enterprise by the year 2020. Interface has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 56% in absolute tonnage since 1996.
This commitment was announced during a working session of the second annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in New York. CGI is a non-partisan event bringing together global leaders from business, politics, academia, science, religion and non-governmental associations to focus on solutions to world challenges including energy and climate change, religious and ethnic conflicts, poverty alleviation and global health. Anderson served as the chair of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development during President Clinton’s second administration.
“The industrialized world creates more harmful emissions than solid waste,” said Anderson. “The Clinton Foundation and CGI provide a platform for companies like Interface to demonstrate a better way…to what we believe will ultimately be a bigger profit, for us and for mankind. Eliminating or offsetting greenhouse gas emissions is essential to our effort to reduce our carbon footprint. We make this commitment and invite the industrial world to join us on Mission Zero.”
Interface is minimizing the impacts of its manufacturing and office operations, minimizing transportation of people and products, and “greening” its supply chain through support and development of those raw materials, projects, and processes that keep CO2 out of the atmosphere. This, combined with energy efficiency projects and investments in renewable energy sources and carbon offset projects, will get Interface to its goal by 2020.
