In 1997 I joined Interface as a textile expert. We have always been optimistic, driven, and ambitious. It’s what has fuelled me to continue my own journey with the company for 25 years.
For nearly three decades we have challenged ourselves and our partners, and we have paved the way for the seemingly impossible to become a reality. From a moment in the early 1990s when a customer asked our founder and my friend, Ray Anderson, “What’s your company doing for the environment?” we have worked hard to evolve our thinking and approach. Setting aggressive targets to get our operations, processes and our emissions to zero, measuring material flow waste, and developing innovative products with recycled materials.
What began as an audacious goal in 1994 to have no negative environmental impact, our Mission Zero®, has evolved to become our focus on creating a climate fit for life with Climate Take Back™. We’ve had many firsts, too many to cover here in this post, but among them was to offer all of our products in our Carbon Neutral Floors™ program to support our customers own climate goals. These are huge steps that make me truly proud of our company.
For decades we have set big goals together as a team and embraced the failures and successes as learnings we make on our journey. This has been particularly important as we’ve worked to deliver the lowest carbon footprint products in the industry.
In October last year, we achieved an incredible milestone: we launched our first cradle to gate carbon negative carpet tiles in the Americas. I’m proud to share that from today our customers across the Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia (EAAA) region can specify our first carbon negative carpet tile collection, Embodied Beauty™, and our first carbon negative microtuft product, Flash Line.
Whilst an important achievement for our people, our supply chain partners, and our customers, this is just the beginning of the next chapter for us. As we advance along the road to become a carbon negative enterprise by 2040 our application and use of carbon negative materials will see us challenge our own norms and drive further innovation.
It’s an exciting time to be at Interface and we’re pleased you’re on this journey with us.
Nigel Stansfield
President Interface, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia (EAAA)