Interface's Back-to-Nature Carpet Create Big Profits
by Janet Roberts
Interface believes that Mother Nature does know best and the sales of its EntropyTM carpet tiles are proving that theory to be correct. "Entropy is the best selling carpet tile in the history of the company," said Melissa Vernon, Manager of Sustainable Strategy at Interface. "It is not just popular with a niche market - the carpet is a mainstream success."Entropy is inspired by nature and based on biomimicry - the concept that natural systems can guide the design of man-made products. The Interface design team literally went into the woods for a day to study the natural flooring patterns created by nature. The result, Entropy, is a carpet with chaos and disorder built-in that resembles the floor of a forest. Using random patterns, non-directional installation and mergeable dye lots, Entropy provides reduced installation waste and extends the lifecycle of an installation. By combining a single, mergeable dye lot with a random pattern, the carpet tiles can be moved anywhere, face in any direction, and easily replaced if they wear out or become stained in a way that hides the new tiles among the older ones. Some are made using Invista's Antron Lumena yard which contains some recycled content. Other styles are made with a hybrid of nylon 6,6 and bio-based fiber, which is derived from corn. "Our goal it to eliminate the use of virgin raw materials," said Vernon. "Nature Works, LLC makes a plastic pellet from corn which we have converted to yarn. We then use that yarn to make our carpet." Interface has a tradition of evaluating the life cycle impact of its products on the Earth, from the raw materials used to make them, to customer use patterns, to their end-of-life fate. Finding alternatives to oil-based products is part of their ongoing plan to develop and integrate sustainable practices into every part of their business. The company used a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model to calculate global warming impacts from its products. The model analyzes raw material acquisition, product manufacture and transport and how customers use the products. The CO2 impacts are also considered based on material types, energy, packaging and disposal. Entropy is part of Interface's Cool Carpet option which allows customers to do something about global warming just by purchasing it. Since 2003, Interface has retired more than 250,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions through Cool Carpet sales, winning the EPA's Climate Protection Award in 2003 for its efforts. "We are continuing to source new offset projects to reduce our impact on global climate change," says Vernon. "Each year we invest in offset projects to neutralize the emissions of Cool Carpet."
Interface has partnered with BP, one of the world's largest petroleum companies, to create the Interface Cool Fuel program; a unique opportunity to "zero out" the CO2 emissions caused by the company's business related auto travel. BP provides a corporate rebate to Interface based on the gallons of fuel purchased in the Cool Fuel program. Interface then uses this rebate to purchase CO 2 emission offsets which, in effect, zero out the impact. The offsets are verified by the Climate Neutral Network. At this time, Interface's costs for offsets are no more than what is recovered through the rebate program, so the Cool Fuel program is not only "climate neutral", it is also "cost neutral." Since August 2002, Interface associates with company cars have purchased and consumed more than 310,000 gallons of fuel using the Interface Cool Fuel Card. For each gallon of fuel consumed, 25 pounds of CO 2 is emitted into the atmosphere, resulting in Interface offsetting over 3,500 metric tons of CO2. Using the rebate from its fuel purchases, Interface buys CO2 credits.
Emission reduction credits for the Cool Carpet and Cool Fuel programs come from a variety of projects. According to Vernon, Interface purchased emission reduction credits (ERCs) from renewable energy projects through NativeEnergy from family-owned dairy farms in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Farm methane abatement projects prevent the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from manure storage lagoons, by digesting the manure anaerobically, producing even more methane, but then capturing and burning it to generate electricity and useful thermal energy. The company also purchased ERCs through NativeEnergy from wind energy projects in the Midwest. Recently, Interface purchased ERCs from projects through Blue Source, LLC, where waste CO2 from oil and natural gas treatment plants is injected into depleted crude oil reserves. The injected CO2 becomes trapped and cannot be emitted into the atmosphere. It also purchased ERCs generated from the production of Dow's Woodstalk fiberboard, a climate neutral product. The credits were generated by a unique agreement between Dow and local farmers where their wheat straw was gathered and incorporated into a fiberboard product for the building industry, rather than being burned at the end of the growing season. This reduced the amount of CO2 emissions that entered the atmosphere and supported the company's global portfolio, while promoting the development of more climate neutral products. "When we buy the ERC credits to offset the greenhouse gas emissions from our carpet we put them in the bank and retire them," said Vernon. "We do not sell our credits again." Invista, a manufacturer of nylon, provided more than 52,000 metric tons of certified ERCs to Interface in 2003 and 2004 resulting from the reduction of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions at their Sabine River Works Plant in Orange, TX. These ERCs were third party certified by the Cleaner and Greener certification program. Ray Anderson, Founder of Interface, told attendees at the B·A·W·B Summit, The Future of Management Education, held in October 2005 at Case, that he does not believe you can make green products in a brown, polluting factory. No one stands alone on the ecological front, according to Anderson, and, for Interface, the entire greening initiative has been incredibly good for business. Costs are down, not up. Interface believes its products are better than ever. "The future depends on vast redesign of the system," said Anderson. "One mind at a time, one community at a time, one industry at a time, one region at a time, one university at a time until the entire system has become a sustainable system."
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