So, I met Ray Anderson, founder of US flooring company Interface and environmental hero, Will Ray Anderson have the answers?. The plush green grounds of Ashridge Business School in the Hertfordshire countryside seemed an apt setting for an environmental chinwag.

While watching him address an ensemble of MDs, CEOs and academics, I learnt a few new things about the man and his company. One of the leading lights of the US environmental lobby, he co-chaired Bill Clinton’s council for sustainable development. In his advisory and mentor capacity, he has met the Chinese government’s number two, a Murdoch or two, and has recently worked with the CEO of Wal-Mart to begin introducing environmental best practice in a business that boasts 60,000 suppliers. And, unusually for a CEO of a multinational company that recorded a turnover of $100 billion-plus (£51.3 billion) last year, he seemed to like journalists.

I caught up with him over lunch to pitch my questions to him – although he doesn’t claim to have all the answers. “When I set out on this journey in 1994 there was no rule book to follow – we had to discover what to do ourselves,” he said. For Anderson, the learning process is a fundamental part of ensuring the workforce becomes engaged. Ideas from the factory floor, he argued, were often more innovative and insightful than those coming from the top. However, that doesn’t mean he wants companies to make mistakes by starting from scratch (that’s why his company have teamed up with Ashridge Consultancy to help businesses on the road to sustainability).

But the suggestion that environmental good practice is a luxury businesses can only afford in times of prosperity is one he firmly disagrees with. “I’m a radical industrialist – I’m as profit minded as anybody. Is there a trade-off between productivity and the environment? No way – our products and profits are better than they’ve ever been.” With the ever-burgeoning price of oil, the fact that his business has reduced its use of fossil fuels by around 60 per cent and total energy consumption by 45 per cent, appeals to the bottom line more than anything else: “Wall Street loves it!” said Anderson. Wal-Mart offers a good example. Altruism need not have anything to do with it – saving the environment also saves money.

As for employee engagement, Anderson believes he has the most engaged workforce going. He gave instances of visiting companies who, on unattended strolls through his factories, had experienced such examples of engagement with values that they immediately changed their own policies. When his sector hit tough times post 9/11, it was the solidity of employee loyalty forged by the environmental mission and values that saw Interface succeed where other competitors collapsed.

Rather than identifying a pervading sense of pessimism for green issues in the current climate, he told me that when he graduated from one of America’s top technical colleges in 1956, he didn’t “remember the word ‘environment’ ever being mentioned throughout my studies”. Now, the word is everywhere and taught throughout business schools. And Anderson is spreading the word that business can do well by doing good.