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This episode features a conversation with John Lanier about turning fear into passion for action, why we have to stop the "take, make and waste" economic model, and the regenerative hig
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Today's episode features a incredible conversation with John Lanier about turning fear into passion for action, why we have to stop the "take, make and waste" economic model, and the regenerative highway making waves in south Georgia.
We also talk about his new book, the reissued "Mid Course Correction" that shares the impact and legacy of his grandfather, Ray Anderson, founder of the sustainable carpet tile company Interface.
John shares how Paul Hawken's words drove Ray to tears by showing him the dark side of his industry...how businesses and industry are causing the vast amount of environmental degradation we see across the world AND that those same businesses are ALSO able to solve those environmental problems.
Finally, John tells the story of how a simple customer question changed his grandfather, who then changed his company, and how that created a ripple effect on the environment and on Serenbe.
Spear In The Chest - 1:30
John Lanier is the executive director of The Ray C. Anderson Foundation, named for his grandfather, Ray Anderson, who was the creator of Interface, now the most sustainable carpet manufacturer in the world. In 1994, customers started asking what Interface was doing for the environment. This led Ray, at 60 years old, to wonder about his purpose in life and responsibility in what he would leave behind.
He read Paul Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce and had what he calls a "Spear In The Chest" moment that led him to tears. The book's main premise was that business and industry were causing the majority of environmental degradation, and that those industries were also the most capable of solving those problems. It was the first time someone had shown him the dark side of his business, so Ray set out to change how he did business.
Ray & Interface - 7:32
Most industrial businesses have followed the Take, Make & Waste Model, as outlined in Paul Hawken's book. Imagine an industry that extracts zero non-renewable materials from the environment to make something, and that there's no waste. These are two things humans do a lot of that nature never does. The change Ray made with Interface was to make it fit a Circular Economy, which John describes as nature's way, and show that it can be profitable.
Carpet is typically made from oil, so it was not an easy task. The company has worked to increase the content of bio-based materials in its product where it could do so without compromising quality. In areas where that's not possible, Interface has designed the entire product to be something that can be broken down into its component parts (full disassembly). They had to invent technology that didn't exist before and work with their full supply chain to make this possible.
Interface also knows that a business is more likely to find success in sustainability if it makes the process easy for customers to help them get there. Part of this initiative is that they'll come anywhere to pick up your old flooring for you, rather than asking you to send it back to them when you're finished.
Ray's Influence on Steve Nygren - 13:56
Ray and Steve had been close friends since Steve was living in Atlanta in the '80s. Once the Nygrens had turned their country home into an Inn, Ray started using it for company meetings, birthday parties, and other events. They were talking over dinner one evening when Steve was in the process of buying land and trying to find a way to protect their rural paradise, and Steve asked Ray if he knew who could help.
Ray asked the Rocky Mountain Institute to visit and helped lead the charrette in September of 2000, but Steve was still uncertain of what he could really do. That's when Ray relayed the Reagan quote that continues to inspire Steve: If not you, who? If not now, when?
John is almost jealous of Steve in that he was too young to be able to work with his grandfather on something so important not only to Ray but to the world. John was 25 and about to start a career as a tax attorney when Ray died (and was eulogized by his own inspiration, Paul Hawken). Steve is proud to see how John has taken Ray's passion and given it new voice for today's environment.
The Foundation - 20:28
John Lanier feels privileged to be able to work with his family and feel connected to his grandfather's legacy through the Ray C. Anderson Foundation, which supports several environmental organizations and initiatives. He mentions that he didn't earn it, he just had a cool grandfather, but John jokes that Ray made one mistake.
Ray had created the Ray C. Anderson Foundation in 1989 as an estate planning tool to be able to charitably give while still having control over how those funds would be divvied amongst beneficiaries, but he'd never taught his children how to run it and didn't relay his posthumous plans. When Ray died, most of his estate went to the Foundation and John's mother and aunt would be trustees.
Luckily they understood what a gift that had been, but they were unprepared and had to learn what it meant to be an effective philanthropist. Their advisory board, which included Steve Nygren, guided them through the process, and because Ray hadn't left many instructions it gave them the freedom to make the choices they wanted to that worked best for them. John feels that has helped him learn even more about his grandfather.
The Ray - 24:52
In summer of 2014, 18 miles of highway that connect West Point, Georgia, with LaGrange, Georgia, were named in honor of Ray C. Anderson. Harriet Langford (John Lanier's aunt) led the charge to have that happen but then realized she'd put the greenest industrialist's name on a dirty highway. She turned that moment of fear into passion for action and decided to do exactly for that highway what Ray had done for Interface, which was to imagine what a sustainable space would look like and work toward getting it there.
The Ray, as that stretch of highway and the organization that runs it is known, works to innovate new technologies to make a regenerative highway system. The Ray is now known worldwide, and John hopes it will be a model to create a scale of change.
The Prize - 27:56
The Ray C. Anderson advisory board dreamt up ways to advance Ray's legacy and one of those ways was an award with Ray's name on it that included a prize to continue advancing. Janine Benyus, a member of the board, had her own nonprofit The Biomimicry Institute that holds a challenge in biomimicry design. The two now partner together to give not only the prize money provided by The Biomimicry Institute, but also a startup business accelerator.
The teams that are almost venture capital ready on the entrepreneurship curve pitch their biomimetic product or idea. One team is judged the best from each cohort and is given $100K prize to continue their journey to launch a business that mimics mother nature.
Steve talks about Janine's influence even beyond that competition. The Foundation was meeting back in the time when The Inn was just a B&B, and Janine sent everyone out into the woods to get a feel for the natural world. That session led to the Entropy pattern, which is a random pattern that Interface designs to mimic the natural world. Up to that point, carpet had to be designed so that the tiles were exact which meant that if there was a defect in the creation of the design that tile was wasted.
Mid-Course Correction, Revisited - 34:46
Ray Anderson wrote Mid-Course Correction in 1998 to describe his transition into a sustainable business model as a way to improve the environmental impact of industry. Twenty-one years later, John Lanier wrote six more chapters to follow up the original seven about the successes Ray and Interface had following that book's initial publishing. One thing that surprises John is how many people didn't know about Ray and what he did with Interface. This shows John that those in the sustainability movement have come to it for a variety of reasons, and he believes that's a good thing because it shows we have a society-wide desire to be better to the environment.
However, John hears a concerned sense of urgency and a fear that the scale of our challenge is now so big that the problem won't be able to be solved. One person he interviewed for the book, Andrew Winston, captures this fear. Andrew is an environmental consultant who has worked with Fortune 100 Companies on their sustainability journey, and the first book he read when entering this career was the original Mid-Course Corrected. John asked him if he was optimistic, and Andrew responded that you had to be both optimistic and pessimistic because we've come so far. His reasoning is that every Fortune 500 Company has someone on staff whose job it is to think about how to make the business more sustainable, BUT we aren't making progress on the biggest challenges like global warming. He agrees with Ray Anderson that this movement HAS to be led by business and industry, not consumers. Interface has continued to innovate in order to meet this challenge. Kari Pei, who lives in Serenbe and is the vice president for product design at Interface, was challenged to create a product that will actually suck up carbon.
Intuit-ive Design - 39:17
Besides LEED certified buildings, recycling on-site, and other initiatives, John believes businesses need to ask uncomfortable and radical questions to push sustainability forward. The best, most environmentally-responsible businesses are not asking "Can we get to carbon neutrality?", but rather "How how climate positive can we become?" Products will need to be redesigned to combat and reverse global warming.
One business John thinks of as a leader in the example to innovate industry is Intuit, the software designer behind QuickBooks and TurboTax. They take the challenge of global warming very seriously and, in partnership with Project Drawdown, developed a 50 by 30 Campaign announced in 2018 at Climate Week. They measured their carbon footprint for 2018 and said that by 2030 they would become carbon neutral by eliminating that 2018 number not only once, but also another 49 times, by the year 2030. They recognize that there will be industries and communities that won't be able to get to carbon neutral, so they're going beyond to make up the difference. John believes this is the mindset the corporate community and individuals need to get there.
Driving The Market - 43:28
Steve knows Ray and some other early adaptors of environmentally-sustainable business practices were doing so because it was the right thing to do, but even mainstream companies today are making the environment part of their business plan. He wonders how younger generations have changed the market demand for sustainable business practices, and John confirms this idea with a caveat. There is definitely an increased demand by consumers to have products made by a socially-responsible (or at least socially-conscious) company.
Where John thinks we'll see the biggest movement, which will be a huge leverage point in advancing sustainability on a social scale, in the near future is labor markets. Millenials and younger generations are no longer just attracted to the job that pays the most as long as they don't hate the work. They want their employers to be socially-conscious and committed to the environment in addition to the flexibility talked about in thing pieces on generational work culture. Businesses that sweep environmental concerns under the rug will eventually realize that offering more money won't bring in the talent they want, and in order to compete for that talent they'll have to also "do the right thing" in becoming environmentally-conscious. As Ray wrote in Mid-Course Correction, he chose "purpose over profit, but never sacrificed [his] competitive drive to succeed in the marketplace." Business can't exist to just make a profit, but rather should make a profit to pursue a higher purpose.
Ray Day - 47:19
The Ray C. Anderson Foundation have wanted to support many organizations, but they also want to honor Ray in supporting the environmental movement and community as a whole. Each October for the last seven, Serenbe has hosted Ray Day on The Inn's grounds. It's free for attendees and is an opportunity to get people and families outside and have them interact with sustainable businesses and organizations while enjoying food trucks and carnival rides. In 2018 and 2019, The Ray started an Electric Vehicle caravan that goes from the State Capitol building in Atlanta to Serenbe for the festival. There were 110 cars in 2019, guided by a police escort the whole way. In 2020, they want to have 500 in the caravan. Ray Day 2020 will be on Sunday, October 18.
Answering to Tomorrow's Child - 49:40
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John Anderson Lanier is Ray Anderson’s grandson and executive director the Foundation created by the Interface founder upon his death in 2011. He’s furthering the work of his pioneering grandfather by writing the rest of his story –literally and figuratively.
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