"IF IT EXISTS, IT MUST BE POSSIBLE," asserts Amory Lovins, cofounder, chairman, and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado-based think tank. He is talking about my company, Interface. Thirteen years ago, when I first described my aspirations for Interface, I daresay that my fellow industrialists thought my objectives would be impossible to realize. In fact, the CEO of a major competitor looked me in the eye 10 years ago and said, "Ray, you are a dreamer." Yet, as Amory says, "If it exists, …"

And what was then considered impossible does exist today - it is a petroleum-intensive (for both energy and raw material) carpet manufacturer that has reduced its net greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent in absolute tons and its water usage by 80 percent (using its 1994 usage as a baseline), even as company sales have grown by half and earnings before interest and taxes have grown by 95 percent.

I FOUNDED INTERFACE in 1973 to produce carpet tiles, or modular carpet, for the emerging office of the future. Today it is a billion-dollar global company with operations on four continents and sales in 110 countries. But it was in 1994 that Interface set out on a new mission: to be the first industrial company that, by its deeds, shows the entire industrial world what sustainability is in all its dimensions - people, process, product, profit, and place. With respect to place, Interface's definition of sustainability is "to operate our petro-intensive company so as to take nothing from the earth that is not naturally and rapidly renewable, and to do no harm to the biosphere."