Ray Anderson Profile on TED.com
Ray Anderson's company makes Flor, the line that made modular carpet tile sexy. But behind the fresh design is a decades-deep commitm...
http://www.ted.com/speakers/ray_anderson.html
Ray Anderson has a carpet company that manufactures Flor, the product line that makes modular carpet tile from renewable energy. Carpet is a petroleum intensive product that has greatly poluted the eco system in the past. Ray, guilt ridden by his role in eroding the environment, is now focused on maximizing renewable resources like energy from the sun. He equates polluting the earth to stealing from our posterities' future. He emphasizes that this a crime should be punishable.
Since we live on a finite earth, we must take great care of it otherwise we will grow extinct like the dinassaurs. Ray proposed a formula: I = P x A x T, where I is Impact to the Environment, P is population, A is Affluence of the population, T is Technology. This explains the negative exponential impact that Industries create in the environment. Ray suggests that moving T from numerator position to the denominator hence I = (P x A)1/T would reduce the rate at which we pollute the earth because we would minimize technology use to maximize use of only those materials from the earth that could be renewed.
Ray Anderson has since increased sales and doubled profits while turning the traditional "take / make / waste" industrial system to focus on renewable energy. He was also nominated as the Green CEO by one of the leading news letters.
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ReplyDeleteLast week I was thinking about the bottom line and perfect competition in a Capitalist economy. Organizations are in the era of hyper competition characterized by globalization, seller saturation and finite informed and picky customers. Long term competitive advantage and economic stability is no longer guaranteed as the new entrants keep creating innovations to disrupt the competition and "steal" their customers. Organizations are forced to optimize all national and global resources to minimize cost and maximize profit. Many times this bottom line is at the expense of our already depleted environment, like importing low cost goods/services manufactured abroad. These goods are low cost because they did not factor in the cost to safely dispose their byproducts. The world at large is impacted by this pollution as it is carried back and forth by the winds and the waters. I remain troubled by the rate at which we plunder our environment and extract finite resources. Are we catalyzing our own extinction? How come sanctions are imposed if we break the law, but no sanctions are imposed when we rob our posterity of their future? If we all become agents of positive change by using only renewable resources instead of depleting our environment, we will restore our ecological balance. Live and let live. Do no harm.