For 21 years I never gave a thought to what we were taking from the Earth, or doing to the Earth, in the making of our product,” admits Ray Anderson, founder and chairman of Interface, in the 2004 documentary film The Corporation.

His awakening came in 1994 when he was asked to do a talk about his environmental vision – and realised he didn’t have one. Shortly afterwards, a copy of Paul Hawken’s book The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability landed on his desk. Reading it was a road-to-Damascus moment for Anderson. He realised his company, a manufacturer of floor tiles, had been “plundering the Earth’s resources for too long” and his goal became sustainability – or, in today’s parlance, achieving a zero environmental footprint.

Starting with a single factory in Georgia in the US, Interface has been growing for the best part of half a century and now has factories and offices all over the world. In fact, the offices and businesses that Anderson doesn’t own – the ones you are working in now – may well be carpet-tiled by his firm.

Today, the company describes its post-’94 self as a “worldwide leader in the production of environmentally responsible modular floor coverings and other textiles”. And, according to Sustainable Futures: An Insight into Sustainability Trends in Business, a report produced by UK and European division InterfaceFLOR, the firm is “on track to becoming the first sustainable company by 2020”.

At a hefty 44 pages, the document also outlines how “Mission Zero” – the company’s drive to achieve a zero environmental footprint – is now a central part of its ethos and culture.

Steve Martin, UK operations director at InterfaceFLOR, looks after its factories in south-west Yorkshire and Northern Ireland and has worked for the company for 30 years. In 1994, while Anderson was tentatively hugging a tree for the first time, Martin was a quality manager trying to bring in the draft environmental standard BS7750 as a means of improving competitiveness.

“I must admit I was pretty unsuccessful in convincing my local management about the value of it,” he says. “Unbeknown to me, Ray Anderson was having his ‘spear in the chest’ revelation at the same time. It was almost serendipity. Ray then sent out this worldwide challenge, one thing led to another, and I ended up travelling round European and Asia-Pacific businesses, helping them to implement environmental management systems. And that grew into wider sustainability issues.”

The message of sustainability spread around the company’s divisions in America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India. But the outside world proved more resistant to Anderson’s message. When he told an assembly of sceptical business leaders that the first industrial revolution had been an unsustainable “mistake”, he was challenging the very core of modern business belief systems. Meanwhile, back in Yorkshire, Martin was sending out a similar message – and getting the same reaction.

“When we first started doing this, I was invited out by local chairmen of commerce to tell them what we were doing. I’m sure some of the people in those audiences thought we were insane,” he recalls. “You can imagine a Yorkshire textile audience – you know: ‘Where’s the profit?’ Most people thought Interface wouldn’t last, that it was just a fad.”

Whether a major organisational goal turns out to be nothing more than a fad usually comes down to employee engagement. If the workforce in Barking thinks the CEO is barking, they’ll simply chuck the odd newspaper in the recycling bin as a token gesture. But you don’t make efficiency savings of $336 million (£172 million) in 13 years through token gestures.

Martin says: “We tend to have quite a stable workforce that has been here for many years. In fact, on quite a lot of occasions their parents have worked here before them.” So getting their buy-in was, and is, essential.

Barry Higgins, UK HR manager, operations, explains that training has been key to gaining staff support: “We tend to do targeted training, for example, on waste reduction, creating an awareness that whatever you do has an impact on something, be it waste, energy efficiency or how we recycle or re-use materials – and that what you can do to minimise your own environmental footprint leads into what we’re trying to do as an organisation.”

Having learnt from the design of previous training programmes, Interface feels that it has now got things right. “Fastforward to 2020”, as the latest programme is called, is not only about moving towards “Mission Zero”. According to Louise Sheridan, UK HR manager, sales and marketing, it also provides good, old-fashioned personal development.

“It’s a three-tiered training programme: induction level, functional specialism and critical analysis,” she says. “All senior managers across Europe go through that as standard. But we also ask for volunteers from any level in the business to become sustainability ambassadors. To date we’ve had around 70 in the UK,” Sheridan adds. “They can decide which of the tiers they want to go through. They may want to go through all three, or just through the induction level.” To complete all three tiers can take up to a year.

The induction level has been adapted for new starters so that people can get the sustainability message from day one. Employees can also benefit from a bonus scheme linked to sustainability and efficiency practices. But is Interface being overly dictatorial in expecting employees to live this message at home as well as at work?

Sheridan insists this is not the case, but adds: “I really feel that by raising awareness internally, people take that into their personal life. We have a quarterly newsletter and there are sometimes tips for what you can do outside work. People can choose to do them or not, but at least we are giving them the information to be able to do that.”

Martin agrees: “Production workers see the same environmental news reports as we do, so they are well aware of what this is all about and why it needs to be done. When we’ve had any briefing or training sessions with the employees, you often find that a lot of them are doing sustainability stuff already in their private lives.”

According to Barry Higgins, the company’s policies are having a positive impact on recruitment and retention. “When we ask: ‘What do you know about Interface?’ more and more people say they have a genuine interest in what we’re trying to achieve, and that’s why they want to join us,” he explains.

Sheridan, who has been with the company for five years and is now a sustainability ambassador, is herself proof of the power of the firm’s environmental message.

“It was the first company I’ve worked for that had a mission and a vision linked to sustainability,” she says. “To be honest, it wasn’t necessarily a passion of mine before I joined but has really grown during my time here,” she says.

Sheridan describes the company’s environmental trailblazing as a “unique selling point” – but, with more and more organisations jumping on the green bandwagon, it may not be for much longer.

This doesn’t bother Higgins, who stresses that the more people try to jump on this particular bandwagon, the better. Indeed, Interface is working with other companies to pass on its knowledge.

As Steve Martin says: “The fact that we’ve kept ourselves going, sustained our business and grown it sends out quite a signal. Lots of people are coming on board with sustainability now, and very few aren’t addressing it as a core business issue. We’re just lucky that we started before most people, so we’re well down the path now.”

Steps you can take to promote sustainability

The following tips are taken from InterfaceFLOR’s “Top 36 actions businesses can take to reduce their environmental footprint”, part of the Sustainable Futures document.

Win the hearts and minds of customers:

• Talk to customers about why they should care about sustainability and its business benefits.

Revolutionise manufacturing:

• Aim for 100 per cent renewable electricity contracts on sites.

• Look into buying surplus electricity from other companies.

• Investigate small-scale, on-site renewables – for example, wind turbines, water heat exchangers and window/glass films.

• Undertake a Carbon Trust survey • www.carbontrust.co.uk

Head office:

• Email rather than post.

• Create online files rather than printed paper files.

• Where you have to use paper, print or photocopy on both sides.

• Think before you put anything in a bin – can it be reused or recycled?

Recruitment and retention:

• Ensure that CSR thinking is translated into leadership qualities and competences.

• Invest in your employees’ training.

• Encourage employees to shoulder responsibility and to think and act in a sustainable way.

Total business vision:

• Eliminate waste – don’t merely reduce it.

• Move from marketing your sustainability actions to “living the brand”.

Further information

• Find out more about InterfaceFLOR’s “Mission Zero” on its website • www.interfaceeurope.com

• InterfaceFLOR’s Sustainability Futures document is available from Karen Hall • karen.hall@interfaceflor.eu

• A factsheet, The Environment and People Management, offering practical advice on green HR practices, can be found at • www.cipd.co.uk/factsheets

• Simon Carlton, HR director of InterfaceFLOR, is one of the sponsors of HR Goes Green.