Business of Sustainability Event

The global business landscape is changing, bringing new opportunities for businesses seeking intelligent growth and future profitability. On Tuesday 17 June we invited senior leaders and strategic decision-makers to join us in a one-day event to explore what sustainable business practice could do for their business.

We brought together the considerable practical experience and know-how of InterfaceFlor, pioneers in sustainable manufacturing, with Ashridge's extensive consulting skills, insights, and understanding of leading and enabling transformational change.

Our inspirational keynote speaker was Ray Anderson, Founder and Chairman of Interface, Inc. Interface is the worldwide leader in the design, production and sales of modular carpet with over $1billion in sales, who began their journey towards carbon neutrality over 13 years ago. In response to overwhelming media and client interest in their success, they developed InterfaceRAISE, a strategic resource for education and guidance to drive business value through sustainability. Recently, Ray Anderson was named one of TIME Magazine's international 'Heroes of the Environment', one of only 43 people to achieve this accolade.

Ray is well known for being an inspirational speaker, setting out his vision for nothing less than the transformation of commerce as we know it towards truly sustainable enterprise. But it was his humanity and authenticity that was remarked upon by participants. In his informal and sanguine southern States style he shared with us his story; of how a dyed-in-the-wool, profit-driven industrialist, leading a global, multi-billion dollar petrointensive business woke up to the consequences of his own, and his company’s, actions. He explained why we need to stop thinking in human time-scales – of our lifetime, career or just the next quarter – and start thinking in spans of evolutionary time–in order to understand what ‘sustainability’ really means. He talked us through Interface’s ambitious Mission Zero plan, to have a zero environmental footprint by 2020, meaning no extracted raw material, no waste, no toxics—only benign emissions, and fully closing the loop: moving from a take-make-waste linear process of manufacturing to the borrow-use-return cyclical processes seen in nature, where ‘technical nutrients’ (compounds not naturally occurring) are continually recycled in the creation of new products. He touched on the concept of ‘Intelligent Growth’, where increased profits come through improved efficiency and the brand value attainable by being seen as a business that cares – doing well by doing good.

To find out more about the event and the work of Ashridge InterfaceRAISE, email: info@AshridgeInterfaceRAISE.com