Sustainability as a recession-survival technique

Here’s an innovative approach to getting through a recession: Ray Anderson, founder and chairman of Interface, Inc. notes in our Executive Roundtable on Capturing the Green Advantage that he thinks Interface’s commitment to environmental sustainability helped the company get through the last recession. Observes Anderson:

We went through one recession earlier this decade. We came out of it in ’04. It was very clear that we survived largely on the strength of the sustainability initiatives, what they had brought to our operations: the reduction in cost, the better products, the motivation of our people, the goodwill of the marketplace. All of those were working right through that recession. As the marketplace went down 36 percent, our sales went down only 17. We gained market share through that recession. We believe the same thing will happen this time.

Read Anderson’s entire commentary.