For Ray Anderson in 1994, two decades into building his Atlanta-based commercial carpet company, the intellectual case for sustainability had suddenly become obvious. The writings of Paul Hawken and others had convinced him that man and nature were on a collision course. The signs of environmental degradation were multiplying. And as one-time industrial engineer Anderson — then 60 and Interface Inc.’s founder and CEO — began to think about his legacy, it made him uneasy. Deep down, Anderson realized Interface’s business model was based on “digging up the Earth and turning petroleum and other materials into polluting products that ended up in landfills” — not something he wanted his grandchildren and great-grandchildren to remember him by. So in 1994, Anderson broke with the old model and began anew. Standing up to naysayers (whose ranks included associates, suppliers and Wall Street analysts), he set out to transform Interface from a traditional business built on consumption and waste to one whose focus — that is, beyond profitable growth — would be zero waste and restoring the Earth.

Since the journey began 15 years ago, Anderson and his associates have confronted technical barriers that no one could have anticipated. For example, you cannot eliminate waste and effluents from factories until you know what the materials you’re using are made of, which often meant going back to do research with suppliers … or with their suppliers, who didn’t always want to tell you how they made their goods. And even if they did tell you, the technology for fixing the waste problem didn’t always exist. “When I conceived of this whole thing, I didn’t see the specifics,” Anderson says. In the pages that follow, see a timeline of how Ray