Share this on

Interface Participates in Clinton Global Initiative

The event is an opportunity for global leaders to share ideas and address world challenges.

Mairi Beautyman -- Interior Design, 9/25/2006 12:00:00 AM

Last week, Interface outlined several of the steps it will take towards a carbon neutral commitment. The carpet manufacturer’s chairman and founder Ray Anderson made the announcement during a working session of the second annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), held in New York.

A non-partisan event, CGI is organized as an opportunity for global leaders from business, politics, academia, science, religion, and non governmental associations to share ideas and address world challenges. Topics include energy and climate change, religious and ethnic conflicts, poverty alleviation, and global health.

Interface plans to eliminate any negative impact its companies may have on the environment by 2020—a promise it calls its Mission Zero pledge. As part of the pledge, the manufacturer must become a carbon neutral enterprise. The firm is also dedicated to reducing its energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions on all levels. To achieve this goal, the firm is minimizing the impacts of its manufacturing and office operations, minimizing transportation of people and products, and implementing procedures which keep CO2 out of the atmosphere. Several innovative green programs—such as COOL, which lets costumers offset the emissions associated with the carpet or fabric they have purchased—are included in the firm's campaign

"The industrialized world creates more harmful emissions than solid waste," says Anderson. “Eliminating or offsetting greenhouse gas emissions is essential to our effort to reduce our carbon footprint.”

Since 1996, according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, Interface has reduced its total carbon dioxide emissions by 56 percent.