When Ray Anderson, founder of Interface, spoke at the industrial carpet maker's annual meeting in 1995, he skipped the usual talk about margins and inventories. Instead, the chief executive officer slammed his slide carousel down on the table and said, "I'm not going to talk about the company. I'm going to talk about Mother Earth, and she's in trouble." Anderson went on to describe industry's toxic legacy and evoked a future in which market-leading companies like his clean up their act, compelling others to do the same. He proclaimed that Interface would phase out "virgin" nylon in favor of recycled. Its factories and offices would replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. And by 2020 the company would cease to produce waste of any kind. "You could hear a pin drop in there," recalls Dan Hendrix, Interface's current CEO and the company's chief financial officer at the time. "Not one question got asked at that meeting." The following day Interface's stock fell 50 percent.
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