WIRED Staff

Ray Anderson you're my hero

Back in 1973, Ray Anderson, an entrepreneur from Georgia founded a home textile company called Interface, which, by the early 2000s would be known as a leader in the move toward sustainable industry and design. These days, Atlanta-based Interface is one of the world’s largest home furnishings companies and, I think it’s safe to say, […]

Back in 1973, Ray Anderson, an entrepreneur from Georgia founded a home textile company called Interface, which, by the early 2000s would be known as a leader in the move toward sustainable industry and design. These days, Atlanta-based Interface is one of the world's largest home furnishings companies and, I think it's safe to say, the only carpet manufacturer (an industry with a major petroleum addiction) that's moving toward becoming totally independent of petrochemicals.

Anderson in his compelling 1998 book, *Mid-Course Correction; Toward a Sustainable Enterprise: The Interface Model...
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"When Interface takes petroleum or natural gas from the earth, and with the help of our suppliers, and converts it to carpet which gets used once and goes to a landfill 10 to 15 years later, I think of that as equivalent to about 2.5 percent efficiency in the use of those precious organic molecules. When we have increased that efficiency a minimum of 10 times we'll still be only 25 percent efficient, with lot's more to improve."

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The clincher for me was that many of Interface's FLOR products--modular carpet tiles--are made from post-consumer recycled materials with little off-gassing. So it's good in theory, but to find out how Interface worked in practice, I carpeted my concrete-floored loft with FLOR tiles. I made my choice online: The low-pile-yet-soft Fedora model--which is 80 percent post-consumer recycled material--in Walnut for my living room and Housepet--think wiry, heavy-duty airport shag--in Painted Turtle for my eating area. (Housepet in Tabby Cat shown left.)

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From the time I computed how many of the 19.7-inch-square tiles I'd need to when the tiles arrived five days later in pizza-box-like flats, the process was incredibly easy. But laying the tiles was even more efficient. Carpeting a 20-by-20-foot room literally took two hours. The result: a mildly retro-looking floor covering with great color and hardly a seam to be seen. And because Interface's FLOR tiles are cradle-to-cradle, I'll send them to the company--not the landfill--for recycling.