Take nothing from the Earth that is not naturally renewable, the founder and chairman of the world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer said.
Ray Anderson spoke to students during his presentation Wednesday as part of the John R. Emens Lecture Series. It was co-sponsored by the Department of Marketing and management in the Miller College of Business and the Bracken Environmental Fund.
Anderson, who founded Interface in 1973, practices in-house recycling by making carpet from recycled soda bottles, and he even recycles discarded carpet from other manufacturers.
It wasn't until reading "The Ecology of Commerce" by Paul Hawken in 1994 that he decided to try to make Interface a sustainable corporation. Since then, he has become a world-renowned advocate for sustainability in industry.
In 1999, he published the book "Mid-Course Correction: Toward a Sustainable Enterprise -- The Interface Model," about his conversion to sustainability.
Anderson said ethics should extend to the land, and we need to protect the beauty of the it.
"Deformed fish life, clean-cut land area and paint containing lead are all things that are affecting the web of life," he said. "We are not above it and not below it."
Growth in technology is also a big problem plaguing the biosphere, he said. The bigger things get and the more there is has a drastic effect on us.
"What we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves," he said. "We can use the growth in technology to be part of the solution instead of using it against us."
We also need a better view of reality, he said; everything was already there and it just took time for us to notice.
"Sustainability depends on a vast mind shift, one mind at a time," he said.
People keep asking, "what is your company doing for the environment?" That is one of the main topics discussed in the largest boardrooms around the world.
"The power is with the people and they are the ones who need to speak their minds and let the businesses know what they want," Anderson said.
About 12 percent of the energy Interface uses comes from renewable sources, and they have decreased all the bad things, such as toxins, coming from their plant. And they are still making progress.
"We are each part of the web of life, and we have a choice to make, which is to help it or hurt it," he said.
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