Corporate Responsibility CEO Goes GREEN!

This is a 7 minute video interview of America's Greenest Executive given by CBC's "The Hour". Ray Anderson the CEO of Interface, Inc. is the first CEO to embrace sustainable business! I would like to give this man a great BIG hug for making a difference and choosing to serve as an example for others in position of power and influence to follow! I have typed a transcript of the powerful message Ray Anderson gives about his personal revelation that altered his Capitalist perspective and caused him to go green!

Ray Anderson said: It dawned on me that the way I've been running Interface, is the way of the plunderer. Plundering is something that is NOT mine, something that belongs to every creature on earth. And I said to myself, my goodness, the day MUST come when this is illegal. That when plundering is NOT allowed. I mean it MUST come. I said to myself, my goodness, someday people like me will end up in JAIL!

Interviewer asked Ray: Your sixty years old, running a company, making lots of money, you could have coasted man and then a sudden turn around. What happend?

Ray Anderson said: It was that summer 1994, we heard our customers asking a question for the very first time. What should a company do for the environment? And we had no access. So a group in our company decided to put a task force together, and bring people from around the world, all of our business to assess our position "what were we doing?". They asked me to address that taskforce, to give it a kick-off speech and launch it with my environmental vision. I didn't have an environmental vision. I didn't want to make that speech. I drug my feet. They stayed on my case. Finally I relented. The date was set August 31, 1994. The middle of August I have not a clue as to what to say. I couldn't get beyond we obey the law. Comply and I knew comply was not a vision.

And it's in the middle of this real quandary that a book lands on my desk (Thank you God). It was pure serendipity its Paul Hawken's book "The Ecology of Commerce". I have never heard anything about Paul Hawken. I don't know anything about the book. I pick it up not having any idea what is in it. I start to thumb it and by page 17 I come to a chapter heading 'The Death of Birth'. Whoa! and I started to read. Of course, I learned that 'The Death of Birth' is Edward Wilson's phrase 'The Species Extension'. Meaning the species disappearing never ever getting to experience the miracle of birth again. Within 10 pages it was a spear in the chest. Just an epiphenal experience! I read the book, I made that speech using Hawken's material and I challenged that little group of people who are leading our company for sustainability. I was convicted by Hawken as a plunderer of the EARTH!

You see people CAN make a positive difference and touch the hearts of those in positions of power and influence. My transcript is only of the first 3 minutes, so please watch the rest.