Sustainability Reduces Costs, Spurs Innovation
How one company created innovations and reinvented their business through sustainability.
Interface Inc., a carpet manufacturer dependent on non-renewable petro-chemicals may seem like an unlikely company to champion sustainability. However, this company’s journey to increased sustainability is a model example on how a company whose business is dependent on non-renewable natural resources can use a sustainability framework to not only become more environmentally friendly but also reduce costs, develop innovations, and reinvent their business.
Along with developing their own sustainable practices, Interface adopted The Natural Step, a strategic framework through which they can analyze their sustainability challenges and set mid to long-term goals to address those challenges. To implement The Natural Step framework and become more sustainable, Interface developed a set of sustainability objectives known as the 7 fronts that included incentives to employees for presenting ideas to eliminate waste and a focus shift away from manufacturing-based business towards service-based business. For more about Interface's 7 fronts check out our other blog here.
A New Way of Doing Business
Interface’s focus shift along with incentive programs for employees produced active increases in innovation that continue today. Instead of simply manufacturing carpet and selling it to customers, Interface began collecting old, used carpet and developed processes to recycle it, creating a closed looped process where waste and costs were reduced. Since this program was initiated in 1995 Interface has achieved savings of $450 million in avoided costs and diverted a total of 103,400 tons of waste from landfills.
These savings have allowed Interface to fund new ventures. In June 2012, Interface, partnering with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Aquafil, began recycling old fishing nets endangering coastlands in Asia for use in making carpets. This project not only provides income to 280 households in impoverished villages and cleans up the environment but also provides Interface with cheap access to materials. Currently, 49% of Interface’s raw materials are recycled or bio-based.
“Marketing the Forest Floor”
In early 2000 Interface created an innovative product that would dominate its tile carpet product line. The product, Entropy flooring, uses Biomimicry to create a pattern that imitates the random way leaves can be seen on the forest floor. This means that the carpet tiles can be arranged in any pattern or direction without regards to the surrounding carpet tiles. Because specific tiles wouldn’t be necessary to provide replacements, this product provided immediate savings in waste and cost for both Interface and its customers, effectively reducing waste from 14% to 1.5%.
Sustainability Is about More than the Environment
Interface, adopted The Natural Step framework with the intention of becoming a more environmentally, financially, and socially sustainable company. Through numerous innovations Interface has reduced their impact on the environment, reduced costs, increased profits, and provided benefit to society. To develop innovations, Interface educated employees and promoted involvement committees and process improvement incentive programs. Employee involvement in these programs increased the speed of information gathering, development, and implementation of numerous innovations such as the ones listed above that saved Interface money, resources and reduced waste. Interface in turn rewards employees for their discoveries encouraging further innovation and benefits. The quest for sustainability provides a fuel that drives Interface’s employees to continuously seek new innovation and cost reduction methods that sustain its competitiveness.
Sources:
Altomare, Mary and Brian Nattrass. The Natural Step for Business: Wealth, Ecology, and the Evolutionary Corporation. Canada: New Society Publishers, 2001. Print.
“The Journey of a Lifetime by The Natural Step”. www.thenaturalstep.nl. 2013. The Natural Step.
http://www.naturalstep.org/en/interface-and-the-natural-step-how-implement-a-sustainability-revolution
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