Interface celebrates 50 years of sustainable development initiatives

Interface therefore adopts eco-responsible practices and manages its activity in such a way as to have a regenerative impact on the climate. The company has concrete results on its contribution to carbon neutrality and its environmental impact.

Eco-responsible practices anchored in Interface’s DNA

Founded in 1973 by Ray Anderson, Interface introduced the concept of modularity to the carpet market. In 1994, a customer asked the company about its environmental actions. Realizing he was unable to answer, Ray Anderson made a radical environmental shift after reading "The Ecology of Commerce."

Ray thus forms the Eco Dream Team which brings together the expertise of authors, activists, scientists and entrepreneurs to identify key measures that will make Interface a company without any negative impact on the environment. Interface had just created Mission Zero®. An ambitious program in many areas: zero landfill, zero use of fossil fuels, zero use of water in manufacturing processes and zero greenhouse gas emissions.

In the 2000s, Interface challenged its suppliers and co-created Econyl®, the first carpet fiber using 100% recycled nylon and the first 100% recycled underlay. Interface continues its innovations with bio-sourced and recycled materials, and introduces a bio-inspired and glue-free installation system: TacTilesTM. At the same time, Interface is launching the Carbon Neutral Floors program as standard for all its products and at no additional cost to its customers.

Climate Take Back: Interface's ambition to reverse the curve of global warming

Once Mission Zero has been accomplished, Interface is evolving its approach and thinking on sustainable development. From this observation was born Climate Take Back, an even more ambitious mission which consists of managing the company in such a way as to reverse global warming. Interface therefore intends to have a regenerative impact on the climate.

The company is innovating again in 2020 with the first underlay using bio-sourced and recycled materials to reduce the carbon footprint of carpets as a whole, but also to ensure the reuse and recyclability of all products.

Since 2021, all carpet tiles manufactured in European factories are now equipped with the new CQuestTMBio underlay. This helps reduce the carbon footprint of carpet tiles by a third on average compared to its old underlay. Interface has at the same time stopped all use of bitumen in its product offering.

A certified carbon neutral activity, products and value chain

All floor coverings sold by Interface - carpet tiles, LVT modular vinyl and nora® rubber - are cradle-to-cradle carbon neutral, through the Carbon Neutral FloorsTM program verified by an independent organization. Through this program started in 2003, Interface has sold more than 503 million m2 of carbon neutral flooring worldwide and offset approximately 6,5 million tonnes of verified emissions, while reducing the carbon footprint by its carpet tiles by more than 79% since 1996.

Interface advocates transparency with its customers by calculating the footprint of the floors they have purchased in order to know their exact contribution to reducing global warming.

Additionally, in 2022, Interface was certified as a carbon neutral company under PAS 2060, the leading international carbon neutrality standard created by the British Standards Institution (BSI). It is therefore the first company in the flooring industry to be certified carbon neutral for all of its activities, products and value chain.

Interface products designed to promote the circular economy

Since 1995, Interface has made it a point of honor that none of its products end up in landfill thanks to the ReEntryTM program. All of its carpet tiles are designed to be reusable and recyclable. In France, Interface works with partners who ensure that used carpet tiles are removed, cleaned and reused in a new space. If the products are too damaged, Interface ensures, with its eco-organization Valdelia, that the products follow appropriate channels so that they never end up in landfill.

The company is going beyond producing carbon-neutral carpet tiles using bio-based materials, creating the first cradle-to-gate carpet tiles. Thus, these tiles store more carbon than is emitted during their manufacture.

For Mickaël Cornou, Marketing Director for Northern and Southern Europe: “Our innovations always aim to reduce the carbon footprint of our products in order to meet our objective of becoming a carbon-negative company by 2040. We launched the CQuestTMBioX underlay with the highest rate of materials never seen before in a carpet tile, which allows us to create carbon negative products. And we continue to invest to expand it more and more. We also have an objective of reducing the carbon footprint on our other products: a footprint which has already decreased by 24% for our LVT since 2017 and by 18% for our rubbers since 2018. Finally, we are currently working on the transformation of our factories according to the Factory as Forest concept to further reduce our impact on the environment. With this concept we want to have a regenerative impact on the biotope and the eco-system of our manufacturing sites. In 50 years we have already come a long way in decarbonizing our industry, but we want to continue to go further. »