Sustainable

Part 3. Interview with Lindsey Parnell – CEO at Interface Flor

Is sustainability is integrated at InterfaceFlor in everything in sales, operations, supply chain management, performance management? And if so, what else has been crucial in setting those steps? 
“The operations guys design their own machines and take into account how to use less energy and create less waste, etc. The more recent development has been training sales people to be confident to carry the message to their customers. As customers become more aware of the issue, it becomes scarier for our own people to talk about it. But our sales people

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Part 2. Interview with Lindsey Parnell – CEO at Interface Flor

When you started in 1994, what were the main obstacles/challenges you had to deal with to get sustainability integrated?
“I joined the company in 1998, after the first wave of internal enthusiasm and external criticism. The main challenge was the external pressure. Ray was not exactly getting a round of applause and under constant negative pressure and publicity from Wall Street. We had to convince customers based on cost savings as shown by what we measured and benchmarked. In our business to business market, we have only seen our customers respond positively to

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Interview Lindsey Parnell Interface Flor

On a sunny morning in August and in the midst of moving our offices from Rotterdam to Amersfoort, I am on my way to interview Lindsey Parnell, CEO of InterfaceFlor. I am excited about the visit since InterfaceFlor was one of the first companies worldwide to embrace sustainability in the early 90’s. This happened due to the epiphany of its leader Ray Anderson, who read The Ecology of Commerce (Paul Hawken) and realized that his business of producing and selling carpets was actually destroying the world. Since then (1994) InterfaceFlor has consequently taken steps to integrate sustainability in all areas of the

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A month ago I was in Kenya for a life changing trip with Compassion. What I understood and saw with pain in my heart was the effect of poverty and waste on children’s and people’s lives.  I came to Kenya thinking about the effects of climate change on poor people whose crops cannot be harvested by lack of water. I was confronted with a more visible pressing issue namely that of waste. Every time I introduced myself at a Compassion project, someone came to me asking what could be done to get rid of all the plastic bags or in some other way asked about the environmental degradation. I can try to describe

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