How can businesses prioritise sustainability today? | Nigel Stansfield, Interface
About Nigel Stansfield
Nigel Stansfield, Vice President and Chief Innovation & Sustainability Officer at Interface, has described the company's development of carpet tiles with an "infinite pattern repeat" inspired by nature's lack of conformity, stating that the resulting product, Entropy, became the company's fastest-growing product and that 60 to 70 percent of Interface's products are now randomly installed. He has also discussed the company's "Climate Take Back" mission, which he described as a commitment to running a business in a way that helps reverse global warming, and noted that Interface launched its "Embodied Beauty" product range, which he said is the company's first carbon-negative carpet tile on a cradle-to-gate basis. Stansfield has stated that Interface counts investors, customers, employees, and the environment as its four key stakeholders, giving them "equal value in the conversation" at the board level. Stansfield has highlighted Interface's Net-Works program, developed in partnership with Aquafil and the Zoological Society of London, which collects abandoned fishing nets from coastal communities in the Philippines to be recycled into carpet tiles. He has said that the program provides supplemental income to fishing families and that sales of the resulting carpet have tripled since its launch. Stansfield has also noted that Interface has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 96 percent since the 1990s, that its European manufacturing plants run on 100 percent renewable energy, and that the company aims to become a carbon-negative enterprise by 2040 without the use of offsets. He has stated that the company's voluntary staff turnover in Europe is less than 2 percent.