At the Georgia Conservancy, it was my honor to serve under the chairmanship of Ray Anderson, who died Thursday of cancer. All who worked with him have lost a cherished friend, mentor and hero.
Mother Earth has lost an irreplaceable champion.
When Mikhail Gorbachev moved on from helping run the world, he turned to environmental protection and founded Global Green. He decided an awards ceremony would be a good way to advance the cause, so he scoured the “A” list of international environmental leaders to find the best person to receive the first Millennium Award. Gorbachev presented that award to Ray Anderson.
That award speaks volumes about Anderson’s international stature — and a full accounting of his awards would fill volumes — but there are other parts of Anderson’s story that I’ll miss more.
Anderson grew up in LaGrange, a good Georgia textile town blessed with wealth born of the Industrial Revolution. He didn’t wander far from the path when he took an engineering degree at Georgia Tech — or when he decided to make carpets, a solid Georgia business holding out the promise of more wealth born of the Industrial Revolution.
That course led him to found Interface, now the word’s largest producer of commercial floor coverings.
Then came a day in 1994 when Anderson had the experience he called a “spear in the chest,” when he read Paul Hawken’s book “The Ecology of Commerce.” He concluded that Interface was doing great harm to the Earth by turning irreplaceable natural resources into carpets that would ultimately remain as waste in landfills for thousands of years.
Anderson decided to stand the Industrial Revolution on its head. He committed that Interface would provide even better floor covering services — but do no harm to the Earth. That commitment became Mission Zero at Interface, a promise to eliminate any negative impact on the environment by 2020.
From 1994 on, with every breath of every day, Anderson was creating a story that had never been told before. He didn’t just have the courage to live an entirely new story. He also had the courage to stand before doubters — 150 times, 200 times a year, all over the world — and proclaim the truth of that story. He once stood before a convention of leaders of higher education and told them that they were teaching their students to destroy the Earth — and he received a standing ovation.
So, what was the impact of choosing to live and tell a story that had never been lived or told before? There is a whole carpet industry out there that strives mightily to be more like Interface. There are captains of industry — and lots of ordinary folks — all over the world who are going to lead us to a better place because they want to be more like Anderson. He set out to stand the Industrial Revolution on its head, and his leadership has shown us how to get there.
Anderson liked to tell a story that sums it all up for me. A group came to Interface to learn more about sustainability. There was a woman in the group who did not want to be there. She was negative and difficult.
On a trip to the restroom, she passed by a fork truck driver moving a roll of carpet. She asked what he did. He said, “Ma’am, I come to work every day to help save the Earth.”
That stunned her, and she started asking him more questions. Pretty soon he said, “Ma’am, I don’t want to be rude, but if I don’t get this carpet to that machine, our waste and emissions are going out of control.”
She returned to the group with a new attitude, started participating, and challenged her own team. Finally, she told the story of the encounter on the factory floor. She said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. ... There is only one word I can think of that describes it; it’s just love.”
She got it right. Anderson’s life was never about the achievements. It was about a gentle, persistent, profound caring — for every flower of the field, every bird of the air, every babble of the brook, every person he encountered — especially, the children and grandchildren — every fiber in the web of life.
I never saw anything like it. The only word I can think of to describe it is love. I’ll miss Ray Anderson’s love the most. So will Mother Earth.
John Sibley is a senior policy fellow at the Southface Energy Institute in Atlanta and a former chairman of the Georgia Conservancy.
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