600 Seconds With: Dr. Liz Minné, Head of Global Sustainability Strategy at Interface
How Interface Is Using Sustainability Innovation To Create a Dominant Market Position
My name is Ed Thomas with the Climate Innovator, and I'm joined this afternoon by Dr. Liz Minné, the Head of Global Sustainability Strategy for Interface. Interface is the leader in the modular flooring space and a globally recognized leader in environmental and climate sustainability.
Among other accolades, Interface just recently won the Net Zero Leadership Award for their sustainability work from Reuters. Congratulations!
Liz: Thanks!
Ed: Liz, to get started, Interface has had so many climate success stories over the years. What do you think is particularly unique about the Interface approach to integrating environmental sustainability into the business that makes your team so successful when it comes to environmental & sustainability initiatives?
Liz: Yeah, it's a great question. It's something I think about quite a lot because it is really quite unique. And it's gonna sound a little bit cheesy at first, but I think that it's really that sustainability is in the DNA here at Interface.
It started with our leader having his epiphany around sustainability in the 1990s and then making it clear that the business was on a new trajectory. You were either in or you were off the bus, right? Having that early start, and that galvanizing force at the top of the organization to become a leader in this space, pushed us to do something pioneering in ways that people hadn't done before.
And it wasn't just a talking point—it really is something that to this day drives us. Sustainability is a lens that we put on our new product introductions. It's something we think about as we open a factory, or, you know, all of those little pieces within the business. We're constantly thinking about the sustainability of our business—not just the dollars and cents—because all of it's important. That is the economics, the environment and the social aspects need to be considered in how we run our business if we want to run an increasingly sustainable business. But I think that makes us really unique.
It's also attracted a culture of people that want to be on this journey because we are a leader in it. I think we are able to attract top talent and retain top talent as a result. The people who are, let's say, on the bus want to be on the bus and want to work towards a better world.
And I think that makes us really unique.
Ed: That makes a ton of sense. We see a lot of companies where leadership will say something, but then it never gets translated down to the day-to-day functioning of the organization.
Were there ways that Interface was able to tie that sustainability mandate down to the the day-to-day functioning of everyone, from product and R&D to manufacturing to the shop floor?
Liz: Yeah, obviously it came from the top in our case. But Ray Anderson [the founder of Interface] didn't know how to get to the top of what he called Mount Sustainability. He said, “Let's set a Mission Zero. We're going to get to zero impact on the planet. By, let's set a year, I'm gonna look to you all to set a year. And the team set the year 2020.”
From there, it was like, well, oh, my gosh! What does that mean? At the beginning, before people knew what the metrics even were, we were like, “Well, let's figure out some metrics. Some of them are going to stick, and some of them aren't. And that's okay, like you have to try stuff out in order to see what works.”
So that was our initial start. What are the targets that we want to set for ourselves in a world that doesn't yet have a zillion targets?
Ed: Yeah, it was really the Dark Ages, right?
Liz: Yeah, I mean, greenhouse gas inventory wasn't invented yet. So what are we measuring against?
So we set some guidelines on what we wanted to start measuring, and then the targets trickled down in a number of different ways. One of the best stories in our past is we used to have this program called QUEST that we did with the shop floor.
It was, “Okay, we want to figure out how to be more sustainable, how to reduce waste and how to be more energy efficient. The people who sit at a desk probably don't know the best way to optimize our tufting machines, for example. But the person working on the shop floor, maybe they have some great ideas that we haven't explored.”
And so we set up a bonus structure set up around it.
We wanted to elevate some of the best ideas they had. The ideas had to make business sense, but we also wanted to deliver on our sustainability goals. So everyone at the manufacturing plant had this bonus plan that was in place, and if you were able to deliver on targets then that helped you get more bonus.
That's a great way to incentivize people right?
Ed: Yeah, tying your bonus to environmental action… that'll get people's attention.
Liz: Exactly.
Ed: One of the things that I write about and our community gets excited about is the role of innovation within climate change. Obviously, a lot has been talked about about how we don't really need new technologies to solve the climate crisis, it's just a matter of going and doing it, which I think is true.
I was curious as someone in a in a climate leadership role within Interface, what do you think the role for innovation is in addressing the climate crisis?
Liz: I think Interface is a is a real example of how important innovation is to our sustainability mission. Innovation is critical. We have a really interesting structure. So I report to our Chief Innovation and Sustainability Officer.
Ed: Wow!
Liz: It’s a role that we have at our organization, and I think the fact that both of those are in the title just tells you how closely those are aligned at Interface.
If I look at the emissions profile of Interface, I can tell you that 85%, probably a little more than that depending on the year is within the products that we make. That's where most of our emissions come from, they are related to the products we make.
And because of that, innovating within the product space is crucial to how we're going to continue to drive our climate impact down.
Some of the ways I think about that: There's innovation and how we design our products. There's innovation in the raw materials that we use. And there's innovation in manufacturing.
Putting all of those pieces together is really critical for us to deliver on our sustainability goals.
And if I can give you a quick case study of something that happened through innovation for us and sustainability:
In 2020 we put out in the market our carbon negative carpet tile. It is carbon negative from cradle to gate, and that took a ton of innovation. The challenge was, how do we design this carpet tile in a way that uses as little material as possible without sacrificing performance and quality and design? How do we find and source interesting different raw materials?
A lot of the innovation side is happening outside of us with suppliers, but we can lean in on what are those innovative materials are.
Then you have to take it to manufacturing: Okay, so these are new, exciting materials. How do we then make it work at scale and process it in our manufacturing?
Ed: That's amazing. If I understand correctly, you built like the Holy Grail for climate products, right? One, where the more units you sell, the more good you're doing for the climate with each individual sale.
Liz: Yup, Yup.
And we've shown that we can scale it because our entire European operation now only makes products on carbon-negative carpet tile backing. It is available in the States as well.
Ed: That's a fantastic innovation example from within Interface. Are there recent innovations, either that you guys have been working on or that you've seen outside of Interface that you particularly love?
Liz: There are so many it's hard for me to to even summarize. At Interface, we definitely keep our ear to the ground. I think there are a couple of different areas that we've been talking about a lot internally.
Just sort of keep it high level, some of the things I'm really excited about are how new innovative materials are really starting to tie to social benefits. So, more holistically, how are we making sure we're delivering positive impacts to our communities as well as being more sustainable with the products that we choose?
I think there's a lot of really exciting work with biomimetic materials—so looking at everything that the world has taught us in 3.8 billion years and thinking about how we can engineer our materials to be more like what Earth has designed.
And the other thing we keep talking about is advanced recycling, which will bring us a lot of interesting opportunities. A lot of the recycling prior has been mechanically chop it up and downcycle it, or use it in maybe not the best way. But advanced or chemical recycling can help us get to that point where we can be more circular in the products that we're creating by breaking products back down to its their base chemistry.
So lots of insane things going on in the world, and we're just excited to figure out what makes most sense for us to leverage.
Ed: I love everything that you guys at Interface are doing. Thank you so much for being a beacon to the rest of us, and showing us how sustainability actually can both be a business benefit as well as being a benefit to the environment.
Liz: Absolutely.
Ed: Liz, final question for you. And again, thank you for your time—I really appreciate this and learned a lot. Do you have any book recommendations or podcast recommendations that you'd recommend to our readers?
Liz: Yeah, sure. So there’s one book I just finished. And it’s sort of work related. It’s not specific to the climate space, but I thought it was a good one. It's called Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.
I think you know that the thing in the climate space is you're doing such fantastic work, but you sometimes feel like you have to give so much of yourself because it's in the name of of helping. You know, helping everyone survive for as long as possible. Right? So I I thought it was a really great book to make sure you're taking care of yourself so that you can then be your best self.
So that was a good book, and then I'm going to give a shout out to a podcast that started recently. It's called The Scope 3 Podcast.
They’re a group that is really focused on how we can drive positive impacts in our supply chain. And I know for Interface, like I said, so much of our climate impact is in our products. And that means a lot of it's in our supply chain. So I think it's a really great podcast to get people started on that journey with their suppliers.
Ed: That makes a ton of sense. And that also sounds super nerdy. I love that.
Liz: Exactly. Yup.
Ed: Fantastic. This has been really wonderful and so insightful. Thank you for taking the time to catch up with us. And again love hearing everything about what you're working on.
Liz: Absolutely. Thanks, Ed.