InterfaceFLOR

At the Leadership for Sustainability event, the next speech was by Ramon Arratia, Sustainability Director for InterfaceFLOR, a carpet tiling company with an excellent reputation amongst sustainability experts. Their whole concept is a sustainable way of carpeting- having it in tiles means that when an area of the flooring becomes warn down or has a spillage on it, only a few tiles need be replaced rather than the whole floor. This is particularly important as some of their main clients are cafes and large airports.

Perhaps surprisingly for some, they are making green waves with their Sustainability Policy ‘Mission Zero’: “Our promise to eliminate any negative impact our company may have on the environment by the year 2020”- another big claim similar to M and S, but without implying comparability to other manufacturers. A worldwide leader in flooring and with a turnover of $1bn, they have the potential to make a big impact in the sustainability of their operations. To do this, they have challenged everything they know, redesigning their products and the way factories operate. Most make judgements based on what is visible today, but InterfaceFLOR spends a lot of time looking at the future and to this end they defined early on what they set out to do.


There is only one institution on earth large enough, powerful enough, pervasive enough,
influential enough to really lead humankind in a different direction. And that is the institution of business and industry.”
—PAUL HAWKEN


One of Ramon’s opening quotes (above) led him to plug the book of Ray C Anderson- Founder of InterfaceFLOR- ‘Confessions of a Radical Industrialist’. Moving on from that, Ramon described that what InterfaceFLOR have deployed since the start of their business has made a real difference:

Our results so far (Dec 2009)
–80% reduction in waste sent to landfill since 1996 per unit of production
– Water intake in manufacturing is down 80% since 1996 per unit of production
– Total energy use down by 43% since 1996 per unit of production
– Non-renewable energy is down by 60% since 1996 per unit of production
– Actual reduction of Interface GHG emissions by 44% from baseline 1996
–30% of global energy is from renewable sources
–36% of total raw materials are recycled or bio-based materials
– Cumulative avoided waste costs totalling $433 million since 1994
– All factories in Europe operate on 100% renewable electricity
–99.7% of the products sold in Europe were manufactured in Europe

Let me just emphasise one of those points- $433 million waste costs have been avoided globally since 1994. Ramon was an upbeat presenter and joked that when people ask him ‘does efficiency pay?’ He replies with ‘now that’s the $433 million question’.

So how do they do it?

A lot of the technology that we need to make big changes in sustainability is already there. Taking inspiration from the aeronautical industry, they produced an ultrasonic cutting machine, and now reduce the waste produced from cutting the carpet tiles. They also ‘close the loop’ to ensure ‘cradle to cradle’ and ‘like for like’ recycling- carpet waste for example can be made into carpet backing.

They deploy resource efficient transportation, with 99.7% of the products sold in Europe being manufactured in Europe and with grouped delivery in theNetherlands, delivery trucks are now 85-90% full on average.

With their yarn, they reduce the impact on the environment as much as possible-
Step 1- reduce the yarn (less is more principle).
Step 2- recycle the yarn (close the loop).
Step 3- invent a new yarn (low-impact alternative).
With their most expensive yarn being nylon, which depends on oil, this makes total sense. Their Environmental Product Declarations (Life Cycle Assessment + Product Category Rules= EPDs) make what they are doing measurable.

One thing that Ramon said stuck with me: ‘CSR is dead’.

He went on to say that Corporate Social Responsibility is dead ‘because what is the point of reducing the impact of a company when most of the impact happens outside of the company’. The value of sustainability is in the product, because that is what consumers buy, they do not buy companies. If they do not encourage their customers to buy the lower carbon products or the government to reduce landfill allowances, InterfaceFLOR will not reach their aims, which is why stakeholder and shareholder engagement is so important here.

The people of InterfaceFLOR apparently know all about what is going on- bonuses are paid based on sustainability and efficiency in the factories and with the average length of service in Europe at 13.5 years, 68% of the 3500 employees think ‘my company’s mission makes me feel my job is important’.