Management Decision

Implementing Sustainability Your heart is racing as you stand in front of the gathering of customers.124 Though not usually at a loss for words, you are having trouble answering their questions about the dangers of the materials and processes used by your company, Interface, Inc., a manufacturer of commercial-grade carpet and flooring.

What's more, when you hesitate, they doggedly persist. And none of the questions are about things you know, like discounts, lower prices, or inventory! After you conclude the meeting, you race back to the office and convene a task force to respond to your customers' questions. But as soon as you assign the team its task, its members turn around and ask you to explain the company's environmental vision. "What vision?" you think to yourself.

Desperately looking for inspiration, you happen upon a book by Paul Hawken entitled The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. You open it, hoping to glean some good ideas that you can repackage for your task force (and your customers). Interface generates billions of dollars in revenue each year, but in the process, it extracts over 1 billion pounds of raw materials from the earth. The company is also a profligate water user, requiring m million of gallons a year for its manufacturing process-not to mention the petroleum-based materials consumed and the greenhouse gases emitted during the process.

Furthermore, your product, carpet, is not recyclable. When people install new carpet, the old carpet is dumped in a landfill. But Interface is not alone. The entire carpet industry works to the same standards. Competitors like Shaw Walker, J & J Industries, and C&A Floorcoverings use the same amount of materials, have essentially the same manufacturing processes, and generate the same amount of waste, all for products that can't be (or aren't) recycled. After reading Hawken's book, you realize that Interface will have to change. The question is, how much?

How much can Interface change its processes to be environmentally friendly without compromising the company's growth? Sustainability requires that products either be able to easily reenter nature without depositing toxins or be recyclable into new materials. For a manufacturing process to be sustainable, its net effect on the environment must be zero. That might mean using renewable resources, redesigning the process to eliminate all waste streams, or even creating a product that can be infinitely recycled. That's a lot to ask. Can you sustain the company if you adopt environmental sustainability as a vision?

Questions

1. Which level of social responsibility best describes your company's current operations?

2. What environmental vision do you communicate to your task force? In other words, what social responsiveness strategy will you adopt at Interface?

3. Can sustainability be economically viable for Interface? Defend your answer.