Ray Anderson, Greening the Carpet Manufacturing Industry
Monday morning at the Greening the Heartland conference in St Louis we were treated to a very inspiring leader in green building circles: Ray Anderson. Anderson founded Interface Carpet in the early 70s and built it into one of the world’s largest carpet makers. In 1994 customers began to ask what they were doing for the environment and Anderson had no answer. Today he has plenty of answers and other manufacturing companies and Wall Street are taking notice.
The 3+ minute video gives a good intro to Ray Anderson and how he is radically changing his own company, an industry and manufacturing in general:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BerHLW6KhRY[/youtube]
Anderson fits the motto for the conference, Embracing Change. By taking deliberate actions he has proven you can change, and change for the better.    Doing the responsible thing has turned out to be a wise business move on his part, saving the company money while reducing their impact on the environment.
It shows once again that being progressive and adopting change can be profitable. Now if city leaders will abandon their rigor mortis approach to policy and realize that a green St. Louis, mandated by planning, will produce prosperity, then real change can occur.
How many city leaders are at this conference? Do they listen or care?
Funny, I met Rick Ernst and Tim Embry from the city at the conference. Both seemed to be very interested in the whole conference. I don’t like to give the city credit because they usually are behind the times but I even heard that someone was there Monday from the City Development Company. I have to give city hall credit for once…I know it will likely be short lived.
Ray Anderson is probably one of the only capitalists who is on my hero list. The rest can(one only hope)go hang.