plan was selling to neil bantum and then charlotte and pittsburgh. so? seven stores. yeah, we kind of focus on being regional booksellers. d like denim. >> sarah palin is a former republican governor of alaska where she served from tax to 2009. she was the republican candidate for u.s. vice president in 2008. for more information visit facebook.com/sarahpalin.

>> while congress is in recess, book tv comes to you live in prime time. starting this tuesday, join us at 8:00 pm eastern for hour long live call-in programs on the significant books and issues of the times. tuesday night join the discussion of adam smith the wealth of nations. c-span hosts samuel fleischacke and russell roberts. then wednesday, a look at the global economy today ....

>> talks about his efforts at transfer his waste generating commercial carpet company into one with no environmental footprint by the year 2020. barnes & noble booksellers in atlanta is the host of this event. it is about 45 minutes. >> a lot of interface people here will pack the audience. thank you all for being here. just did brief introduction. in 1994, 15 years ago, i challenged the tiny task force of interface people, 16 or 17 people, to lead our company to sustainability. which we defined as operating our petroleum intensive company in such a way as to take from

the earth nothing, not naturally and rapidly renewable by the earth, and to do no harm to the biosphere. take nothing, do no harm. in other words, zero footprint. we eventually chose 2020 for the target year to reach zero footprint. here we are 15 years into that journey of a 26 year long journey, to 2020, and we are better than 60 percent of the way. up that high high mountain called mount sustainability, the point at the top representing zero footprint, zero environment impact towards which we aspire. the book, "confessions of a radical industrialist," is mostly about how, how does an industrial company, petro intensive industrial company do this? i picked a few passages from the book to read, hopefully to wet

your appetite to read more. and i'm not sure how long it will take. i actually haven't timed myself, if i run over 30 minutes, lisa, you will me know. and we will leave time at the end for questions, if you have them. so with that preamble, let me begin. it doesn't make the news when the owner of a coal mine comes out against regulations that he thinks will take money out of his pocket. but when a farmer growing designer let his players to goes organic, when some boys up in vermont say they're going to make ice cream with milk from pampered and raise cows, while most folks to shake their heads and say what would you expect? but when the ceo of a sizable internatiinternational company like mine to close with the georgia accent that he intends to the limit is companies and private footprint and become sustainable and then restore it, it does raise some questions.

believe me i've heard most of them. i thought anderson was a cold eye capless. i thought he was one of those. what is going on here? who is eat and what planet did he come from? so if you'll permit me to introduce myself and my own way, here goes. i was born and grew up in the small georgia town of west point, the third of three sons, bill junior the anti, baby rae. my mother ruth was a schoolteacher until she married, and she had to die because even in the middle of the great depression married ladies weren't allowed to teach school in west point, georgia. my father, william, was the assistant postmaster in town, a secure government job in those hard hard times. as the oldest of seven, he had to quit school after the eighth grade to go to work to help support his family. he did it because it was expected of him. he was plenty smart, especially in math, and with an education

he could have done just about anything. i never heard him complain about it though, though i knew it was a waste. and i think he did, too. maybe that's why my father was bound and determined not to let the same thing happen to his three boys. you make sure we all got good educations. bill junior became a medical doctor. my other brother, wiley, grew up to be an award-winning science teacher. but what about me? i was the youngest. so i guess i knew there wasn't going to be much money left after my brothers college bills were paid. he was a good thing i grew up with a football and when it ended book in the other. while my mother make sure i studied hard, my father made sure i played even harder. hinault a college football scholarship would make it a whole lot easier for him, for me to fall in my brother's footsteps. westpoint high school's varsity football team was on its way to the state chairmanship when the coach called an eighth grader named ray anderson into a

scrimmage with him one afternoon. though i was big and strong for my age, i quickly learned that -- sorry -- i quickly learned that quantity has a quality all its own. the lesson was hammered home that afternoon when i tackled a big, hardcharging running back who would go on to become a high school all-state in college-level player. my head and his knee collided on a bone rattling crash. that ended the day's practice for us both. that was enough for me. my head was spinning and i could feel a lump of funding on my forehead i could even see it rise. no scholarship was worth getting run down by a truck. so naturally enough, i didn't show up for practice the next day. but coach luis would have none of it. he left the field and having telephone conversation with my father. my father had never, ever left work in the middle of the day.

but he did that day. he found someone to cover for him, and went outside with one purpose in his mind, to finding me. westpoint is small so it didn't take him long to walk up and down the streets and deliver the tongue lashing of my life. when he was finished i return to the football field, soar and jason, but also determined to never again be called a quitter. to never say die. from the i threw myself into every game i played, even when it hurt, even when it was dumbed down on the field at all, even though i hated football, but quit? never. my father make sure i got the message loud and clear. that's in them and the lesson i carry with me to this day. coach luis taught me to rise above all the obstacles, mental and physical, get thank its own in your path and to compete. and by competing to achieve more than you ever thought possible. that was another vital lesson, from founding a company to do so

it's the sales floor to a never-say-die vet the approach, both have paid off into many ways to count. i also have a favorite childhood memory of sitting on the back steps of my home on a crisp clear november afternoon eating and listening to the georgia tech football game on the radio. in 1945, i was an eager 11 you're listening in as johnny mcintosh tackled a ball carry out the 5-yard line. the ball popped up and george mathews grabbed it and returned it 95 yards for a touchdown. the successful onside kick gave georgia tech the ball back and check went on to win a game that i was listening again to use later when they kick the fourth quarter field goal to beat navy again, 17-14. i guess i have loved at georgia tech for so long as i remembered. four years later i sat on the same sets polishing my football shoes for westpoint friday night

game. captain an all-star, member of the team headed for another state chairmanship gain. and assistant to georgia tech coach was right there with me recruited me to come to atlanta as an offense if running back. when other scholarship offers arrived from the university of georgia, auburn and bear bryant of kentucky, there was another no doubt in my mind or i was going to college. that was a scholarship in my pocket and a college education in hand. there was nothing that could hold me back. i was proud and happy. so was my father who was also more than a little relieved. but what to study. i had always been interested in how things work. i was good at math and i loved ideas. engineering appealed to me, but what kind? when i showed up at tech i thought i would give aeronautical engineering a try. but a couple of weeks of classes convinced me i didn't want to design airplanes. civil engineering. again i figured i would was not

for me. how about textiles? that make some sense that there were plenty of mills around west point when i was going up. a summer job at one of them after my freshman year at tech taught me a lot of practical things about textiles but left me covered in sweat at the end of every workday. for generations textile workers have been called led to its, and now i knew why. by summers and i swore i would never go back inside in milligan. as i rotated text excellent engineering courses i found them all interesting and surely challenging, but somehow they focused to nearly for me. i wanted to put on a wider field. so after my summer i gravitated to a international engineering. though the real engineers called ie imaginary engineering, because it lacked a special's death. its broader focus they'll just write to me. there i studied calculus, physics, electricity,

thermodynamics, strengthen material and machine design, but i also learned how all those things work together. how to make the man machine system run efficiently, how to build something new and market it. or electives i took public speaking. i took letterwriting. i took a class in salesmanship. i didn't know it at the time that i was preparing myself for the work of an entrepreneur. very soon i encounter something very, very new and very different from the hard core engine and courses i have been taking. it didn't matter if the courses in electrical, mechanical or chemical engineering, one got the idea the professor knew there was just one good way to solve a design problem. the way it had always been done. and the sooner you learn that way, the better. not so in an industrial engineering. they are my professors make sure i learned one thing first and foremost. there's always a better way. that's another lesson in print all my brain for as long as i shall live, and for and lover of ideas, it is one to live by.

i played football until the ncaa ruled out one but two football. that was a problem for me. i was fast enough on offense. i carry and catch the ball, even throw it, but an old injury to my shoulder and i couldn't take it the way the of the boys could. and playing defense men taking lots of hits. i was one hardtack away from a lifelong disabling injury. sure enough, a dislocated shoulder my sophomore year sidelined me. i didn't quit. i was forced to retire. but my faith in the coach was repaid. though i had to do menial work around the locker room instead of carrying the ball on the field, he honored my full starship. his words were his bonjour and so the. it was a measure of him as a man and i will always remember that as a lesson and with a tremendous gratitude, too.

i know the assistant postmaster at west point georgia was certainly grateful. i was more relieved. i figured i now had it made. a free ride at tech on a bum shoulder, but when i set it to my father he about to my head off and want me to never, ever say those words again. one of that remark that back to coach god? did they understand how lucky i was? didn't appreciate what i was getting lex while i got his message and he called down. for the next three years i did on jobs around the locker room, handing out and picking up socks and shocks, managing the athletic department's bookstore and showing up every day for practice in sweats, but no more pads, no more brain rattling collisions. skipping ahead. [laughter] >> a brief aside. i sometimes find myself talking about this to business leaders across the country, not talk about georgia tech but about

sustainability. the business leaders across the country. even across the globe. i have been accused of preaching to the choir and it is true that most audiences but not everyone in all those audiences agrees with me. every once in a while i run into a businessman who gets ready in the face when i see just we need to make this paradigm shift that he is dead sure i want to shackle the free market with regulations and impose limits on the way he does business. the truth is that sustainable practice is all about protecting the goose that lays all the golden eggs. that's what nature is all about. running his business sustainably removes the limits with which he is unconsciously shackled himself. a big part of the problem is that we -- because nature provides us with services that don't appear yet on the balance sheet or and the profit and loss statement doesn't mean we can ignore them. at some large corporations have discovered, ignorance can be extremely costly. back in the 1980s, the water

coming as part of waters discovered pesticides and nitrates in the spring that fit their bottling plant that it turned out that farmers had cleared vegetation that once filtered the water. without that filter, their mineral water and their entire business was suddenly at risk. when international corporation with brands like lipton and dazzling discovered the north atlantic codfish that they depend on for their premium rose of this division was in real trouble. why was that? because those caught had been overfished to the point of collapse. since they can only pass some of those costs along to the consumer it cut their margins by 30%. nhl global in latin america was a hydropower company that was literally you losing its source of power and private landowners upstreamed were clearing forest for my sock and agriculture.

when the rains came there were no trees left to keep the rivers from eroding their banks and filling the reservoir's with silt and mud, and you can't run silt and mud through a turbine. these are examples major was providing a service that the blind hunt for privatized profits and about extra last costs had threatened that after all, why should those farmers clear their land, use nitrates and pesticides, cut their trees? why shouldn't the fishing boats clean the oceans of fish? here is another example and one that hit very close to my home. ask yourself this question. what is the value of a forest? traditional thinking would say that x. less the cost of harvesting the trees equals the value of that force. but is that an accurate reckoning? not by a long shot.

in the first 100 years of its existence the small town never experienced a flood. than one yet the banks of the river overflowed causing $5 million worth of damage so the city's fathers commissioned a die to be built at the cost of about $3 million. the dyke was good enough to prevent another flood for the next five years but then came a season of especially hard rain. the dyke was brief. this time the flood damage came to a $10 million. so they rebuild the dyke even higher. though the cost of construction was up eight my dollars had risen even faster than the floodwaters that the new dyke protected the city for another seven years. and then would you know, the city flooded again. the dike was written by someone asked what is going on here? soy team of experts was engaged to analyze the problem and found some answers. one of those experts was and he colleges, and he was brilliant insight, look at the problem from a different perspective.

he didn't research rainfall records or the details of the dike construction or the flow of rivers. he looked upstream. what did he find? he found that over a period of 20 years the forestry had been clear-cut for 50 miles upstream drastically changing the hydrology of the region. root system were no longer there to hold the rainfall. it went off into the streams flowing the riverbed with silt and flooding the unfortunate city downstream. and killing the fish, too, depriving the poor people of the area of an important source of sustenance. i know my father used to catch 20 down channel catfish in that river. our family could even off it for a week at those they channel cat are gone now. ofthe damnedest to a 20,000 acrs of forest and prime agricultural land, not to mention the habitats of all the living

things that that was called those acres home. today that lake is a polluted cesspool and destroying the recreational value. the other justification for building a dam in the first place. so now ask yourself that question again. what is the value of a forest? the shortsightedness of tradition economic life pretty much exposed, doesn't not? and i've not even mentioned the value value of a forest, a producing oxygen or the songs of birds no longer heard were those four is used be. you can see what i mean when i say we need to look at the world through a different wider angled lens, as albert einstein once said, problems cannot be solved

by the same thing used to create them. in other words, we need new thinking from a higher level of the awareness. so how do we begin? the truth of a new paradigm doesn't just spring into existence. it will have been there all along obscured by the old flawed use of reality. after all, the earth was round, even when everybody knew it was flat. i like to say that the shift of sustainability will happen one mind, one company, one technology, one industry, one community at a time. and i've seen it happen. i remember the first time i spoke before the united states green council back in 1995 in big sky montana. i counted has in the audience that there were just 135 people in that room. when assure the plenary at the meeting in atlanta with paul 10 years later, there were 12,000. two years after that in chicago,

over 22000 registered, and an estimated 40,000 showed up. in business that is a growth curve to die for. today the leadership in energy and environmental design lead rating system is emerging as a global model for green building standards. clearly there's a broader awakening underway, something is happening and every businessperson would be to pay attention. in america the number of families who have some regular affiliation with companies and organizations involved the sustainability is already in the millions, and growing every year. they have a very strong presence in the market where my company does business and without a doubt, soon or later, the same will be true for u.s. but there's no denying there's also a fair-minded resistance for change. why? i think there's more than just perverse incentives at work. our culture is very much in the grip of some old flawed views extended to direct by the contrast to sustainability. flawed use that are reflected in and fueled by consumers.

there is a flawed view that treats earth as if it were an infinite source of raw materials to feed our industrial system, stock ourselves, fill our houses, and spill out into rented storage units, or in landfills, oceans and the air. there's a flawed view that the worth of an idea. there is a flawed view that forgets to ask one simple question when assessing the environment cost of a business decision, what if everyone did it? what if airborne discharge until you waste water into the local river? what if everyone sent hazardous waste to be buried in a local landfill? what if everyone the office lights burning or truck engines running or their thermostats set too high or too low? what if everyone did it? there is a flawed view that assumes this world of ours is to conquer and rule, that we can take whatever we want, without regard for all the other species that depend on and comprise nature itself.

the self sustained natural world that we depend on and aren't part of that there is a flawed view that went by cuba and all that stuff gets us into trouble, technology will see us do. even though it is the extracted attribute of technology, especially coupled with numbers result oriented to bring intelligence that got us into the fixed to begin with. and there is the flawed view that relies on the invisible hand of the market to be an honest broker. even though we know the market can be very dishonest. does the price of a pack of cigarettes reflect its true costs? not even close. how about the price tag on it lead tainted toys from china? i don't think so. and the price of a barrel of oil? last time i look the oil company for deploying army -- the oil companies were not deployed armies to the middle east to protect the oil fields, you and i were doing that with our taxes. our sons and daughters are doing it with their lives. the oil companies aren't paying

their medical bills for all those folks breathing smog either. know are the building the seawalls our coastal cities will need to keep the warming, rising ocean from drowning them. let our grandchildren foot the bill. talk about innocent third parties. add up all the costs the oil companies are having so what else they on their behalf and the price of a barrel of oil even by today's measure is too low by $150, maybe $200. it is infinitely too low if you have lost a son or daughter, a husband or a wife to war. here's the thing, while a few of us might enjoy the fruits of what we think is a free market, we also for the consequences of a market that is very good at setting prices but has no concept at all of cost. a market that is rig to get someone else to pay the bills were the unwary public allows it to happen. a system of economics, idealizes the so-called basic economic problems as the driver of all

economic progress, the problem, the gap between what we have and what we want, not need, want. so how should we look at the world and our social point of view of sustainability? how do we reshaped the conveyor belt we are stuck on and bend it into a closed loop circle? read the book and see. [laughter] >> talking about katrina. reminds me of a vacation trip my wife and i took the week following hurricane katrina's collision with the gulf coast. we were on an island in nova scotia about as far from new orleans ninth ward as you can get and still be in north america that we've been glued to the television watching cnn keeping up with the unfolding catastrophe, astonished at the unrelenting cascade of government failure. more astonished that something like that could happen in america. i had to get away.

so one more and i drove a rental car to a trailhead and took a walk. i was alone on the trail. as i neared the top huffing and puffing along, eyes on the path and for me, i heard a noise. stopped and looked up. there on the trail not 60 feet away about the distance from home plate in the pages them stood a bold moves that he was standing crossways the path blocking it completely, enormous, at least seven, 8 feet tall. and he was looking at me. i actually considered for just an instant clapping my hands to shoo him away. but then i caught myself and thought, don't be stupid. this is his trip that i am the intruder. if he charges me i'm dead. so i backed off, turned and retreated down the mount keeping a watchful on on the trail behind me. my heart was pounding. it was an amazing experience that i had come face-to-face with the force of nature. but when i got back to where the

news from new orleans had only gotten worse. after meeting them is, i could not miss the metaphor. the trail was the mousses territory. i was the intruder. has human of may 2 want to shoo him away and claim that trail for myself, and very foolish. and i challenged him it would have been in my own peril if he had charged me, i would be mincemeat. do you see the metaphor? the atmosphere is nature's trail. as louisiana rivers and wetlands, the deltas and the ivans. we chose danger on her trail with our greenhouse gases, are man-made river challenge and are chopped up wetlands at our own peril. on august 29, 2005, nature charge. out of the gulf of mexico and louisiana and mississippi an area roughly the size of england where mincemeat. now i doubt there are many scientists who would say that katrina or rita, wilma or even ike were caused by global climate change.

i think there were very few who'd say that they were not exacerbate and fueled by abnormally high surface temperatures. detainable from a category one hurricane to a category five in just a few days. wilma did in just one day. so why would the gulf of mexico abnormally warm? the precautionary principle says we must not assume it was an accident that we must ask what is going on. there are very few scientists who would not agree that hurricanes and floods, storms and droughts will become more frequent and more fears, as the atmosphere and oceans with their three-year lag our warmer still in the years ahead. and finally, to the converging trends, and education's role. paul hawken and others have highlighted the many ways in which the biosphere is under

assault at the trend lines are nearly all downhill and and and if we do nothing, it is certain every person from every nation, every corporation on earth depends on majors uninterrupted services for its survival. if nature does not make it through the transition from the first industrial revolution to the next, none of us will. that's the bad news. and we have some good news to consider. the trends and awareness and the development of the concept of sustainability and corporate social responsibility are rising. small-scale local business and giant multi-corporations are discovered at applying a filter through everything they do can add to their top and bottom lines because the marketplace is rewarding good behavior. when it comes down to is this, you and i happen to be alive at a critical junction of those two opposite trends. we have the power to destroy this living earth, and that construction is ongoing, even accelerating. but more of us are realizing

that change is necessary and within our grasp, if we just decide to reach for it. how will it all come out? well, we will know soon enough. for i believe that where those two trends, accelerated instruction and a growing awareness, intersect is where the fate of humankind will be decided. and there are other tribute were transiting into this fateful confluence. one is the revolution in technology that is beginning to produce a spectrum of new clean technologies that is renewable, but nine and resource efficient. through the research colleges and universities clearly are playing a significant role in this revolution. another good trend is the tendency of women in business, profession education and government that women can be extremely effective problem solvers when they bring their right brain skills to institutions long dominated by left brain and. after all it was those left brain pragmatic preoccupation with simple bottom line and immediately turned and other practical issues that got us

into this mess. surely another kind of thinker is needed to get us out. colleges and universities with new technologies are born where women are not held back our long-standing and hidden traditions stand at the headwaters of both these tribute were trends. so with the voices being raised by religious people of all denominations that they look at the state of the earth and see not just an industry problem not to some flawed rules that we inherited from the first industrial revolution, but a direct to solve on the creation of the prehistoric roots of their awakening to creation go back at least to the realization that the biblical command to establish dominion over the earth was a call to be a shepherd, a steward and not a license to kill. and has become the duty of many religious people to take on that shepherding role, not to subdue and dominate the earth which is as we've seen in a very short-term proposition, but to respect, cherish and protect it. we will examine some of them --

we will examine what some of them are doing in this chapter. when it comes to how we educate our young people about their one and only planetary home, the problems go back a very long way. our universities and top schools even our own home a moderate, georgia tech has been very good at turning a professional because the skills appropriate to the first industrial revolution. out not to the new and. where there has been a tremendous surge of interest in sustainability at some universities now sustainability offers green solutions. some areas have been slow to catch on. the courses many teach offer no single solution for the world their graduates will find that they are still part of the problem. electrical engineers are still taught all about coal-fired central power plants and not enough about distributing generating capacity for clean renewable sources.

like the wind and the subject or the local methane rich garbage dump dump. stack ceramic engineers learned methods that literally go back 1000 years or. meanwhile, they overlook the natural nano structural methods that use the self organized and minerals in cold sea water to produce a ceramic products that is superior to any man-made ceramic. there are colleges and universities stations and years and still learn to make teflon from petrochemicals, oil and boiling sulfuric acid. yet they know little or nothing about a common spider manages to create a superior fiber five times stronger and lighter and more resilient at room temperature and add nothing but books. that's biology. why should any right thinking engineer get involved with all that messy biotech's stuff? it seems to me that any right

thinking engineer should look not only at what it has worked in the past, but especially at how it can be approved in the future. this is a few billion years of the cuban engineering wisdom. low-temperature chemistry and water, and naturally powered. from recyclable worth paying something to? and it's not just that technology side of education that needs to be retooled, sadly some of our economic students continue to be taught that prosperity can be measured by how much stuff we make, use and throw away. that the gross domestic product figures are a good measure of progress. for we know it measures just about everything except the things that make life truly worthwhile. what use is a number that the signs of zero to the time parent invest in raising children. i'm sure you see the problem the way it goes the on metrics. economic students continue to be taught that xml is, the cost and the environment don't count in

economic system. if we did the price of oil would double perhaps triple. which school has the nerve to suggest something like that? moreover will our entire system of economics still cling and worship at the shrine of the basic economic problem. all economic progress is driven by the gap between what we have and what we want, want, not me. should they study the nine psychical methods that run on a bun energy from the sun and find ways to cultivate self rotating pesticide free permanent food crops? they do exist, you know. some designers continue to be taught that good designers when

there's nothing else to add. but when every step every component every link in the supply chain serve to broaden our environmental footprint, wouldn't it be smart to define good designers when there's nothing else to remove. just as michelangelo revealed david's perfect hand by removing the marble. our law students are still taught the simple revelatory compliance which we know is years out of date, and defend their clients bad behavior of their highest callings. shouldn't they be urged to go beyond compliance and embrace ethical behavior and assist their clients come along with them? our businesses continue to be taught explicitly or not that the earth is theirs to exploit, or will they learn that i of hiring environmental ethics as well as high humane ethics. teachers in all these areas have a special font ability to challenge the status quo. and responsibility that goes well beyond what even the captain of industry must pay up,

corporations might resist change but relative to a university, they turn on a dime. with the universities somehow cannot. change comes slowly in academia, and so the harmful effects of our curricula tend to persist. is the decision that new leaders in academia are going to have to consciously. you can either pass on and perpetuate an old and construct a body of knowledge and sharing that it will remain and cause more harm for other generation or two or three, or you can wake up to the responsibility and the satisfaction of challenging the obsolete status quo in your curricula. to break with that potent opiate we've always done it this way. thank you. [applause] >> how is our time, lisa?

>> we have time. where's our host? five minutes for questions? any questions? yes? >> you see the risk of getting kicked out of u.s. chamber of commerce with those years. how do you deal with the objection of, that's all well and good but we got quarterly financial targets to meet in our business, and if you can't beat them will bring in a ceo who will meet those expectations. and you have successfully at interface, but more broadly, how does he do executives resist pressure? >> first of all, i never have joined the u.s. chamber of commerce. [laughter] mac but we do have shareholders. interface is a public topic, and the book is a guy you go about doing this without breaking the bank. without ruining the company.

we attack waste first, waste elimination and got way ahead of the cost curve. and then there's the other technologies came into focus, the r&d necessary to achieve them, the investment necessary. we reinvested some of those savings into the new technologies. consequently, the waste elimination effort has funded the entire mountain climb, if i can describe it that way. and the business case for sustainability has become crystal clear to us. and it would be true for any corporation, approach the problem the way we did. our costs are down, not a. because of that waste elimination effort. $419 million to militantly saved through the years, more than funding all the rest of our products are the best they have ever been. disquieted that about the fact that is had on our product development effort. leading us to innovations we never would have dreamed of, and

better products than ever before. our people are galvanized around the shared higher purpose of sustainability. you cannot before bringing people together and motivating people. with a shared higher purpose. at the top of that pyramid of human needs is this need for self-actualization which translates into be a associate with something bigger than ourselves. than the goodwill of the marketplace has just been astonishing. we got on this path because our customers were asking us 15 years ago, what is your company doing for the environment. and we had no answers. today, the same customers and many, many more are embracing the company for what we are doing. so the goodwill of the marketplace, greater than any amount of clever marketing or promotional advertising, at any cost could have generated so there's a better way for bigger profits, better for the shareholder, bad for the planet. is a better business model. and that's why i wrote the book. so anybody can see it clearly.

there was another, yes, ma'am. >> i'd like to recall, at the beginning of the movie, i don't want to be on the camera. >> no, they're trying to get you on the microphone. >> all, there was a scene with the british were dancing and having a party. the japanese are coming into their area and they are completely oblivious to the fact that their world has ended. the whole story goes on about what -- and having lived long enough to see the degradation of our whole entire planet, which is sad to say, i'm almost 65. we can say, yeah, the planet is going. i listen to the 11th hour for different times. we can look at every living

system which is dying. and when i see that you have done, and my question to you, is this. in reading your book, listening to your tape, what i found was to have developed a paradigm, which is a wonderful paradigm. your book to find it very well for industry, for your particular niche in what you're doing. but i see this paradigm and able to play out all areas like the economy and health, agriculture. and i would like to know from you, if you have systems in place, for example, my personal heart goes to the soil, because i think without food we can have all the carpet in the world, you can't eat it. and i see good as the most critical issue in our day. so if you have a system in place, is there any way to share that with other people? because i find so many people

ignorant today, and i don't understand it. and that's my question. >> you'd have to approach it because we don't deal in food. the closest we come to touching that agriculture world is through the use of some bio-based polymers, poly lactic acid that comes from corn dexterous. and the question comes out is the corn grown, where is a grown? is it on a sharecropper farm in alabama or is it on an industrial farm in iowa? and is a genetically modified or what? those kinds of questions are peripheral to us, because the bio-based polymers are very small portable we do. we can rationalize, that is going to be grown on sewage sludge for our purpose. that it's not good. so you have to approach the agriculture side. but everything else i know in the industrial world is

addressed by this book that either directly or through analogy. and the model that we developed of sustainability i believe is the general model for the whole industrial system. and that system can be transformed into a waste free, so driven, cyclical resource, efficient economy. day.hat is our salvation at the yes? >> in your book, you mentioned that the easiest way to begin the process of change, was to reach for the lowest hanging fruit. i'm curious now that you're well into this, this period of trying to reach of sustainability, how were you dealing with the challenges of reaching ever entire fruit? >> the latest metrics elsewhere only 43 percent of the way to zero on that front. so there is a long way yet to

go. to a limiting waste all the together. is anything we don't do right. the first time. do everything right the first time every time, that defines the goal, anything short of that is waste. so we have a long way to go and there are still lots of low-hanging fruit. >> i think maybe we might be out of time. one more question. a question in the back? >> talk about academia, slow to change them is that what you said? [laughter] smack so i'm a professor year and can you recommend to us to how we should change. >> i think georgia tech has become the exception. [laughter] >> since wayne published his vision mission strategy, for university working for sustainable society and the lead paragraph, you remember that?

and set in motion a liberated all kinds of activities on the campus. so most of my comments about tech are mostly based in the past. today, i think you guys may be leading the world. congratulations. i think we're done with questions now, sorry to have to cut it short but there are books to sign i guess. and ceo at the signing table. thk you. [applause] >> ray anderson founded interface in georgia in 1973. he was cochair of president clinton's council o sustainable development and a presidential climate actionject. to find out more visit ray anderson.com. >> we're in section 27 of arlington national cemetery. this is one of the oldest sections of the military cemetery at arlington.

and it is one of the story of arlington national cemetery really begins. arlington has so much history tied up in the civil war. this section of the cemetery was begun in may 1864, really before the was a cemetery. how did that happen? >> it happened that 1864, the civil war have been going on for several years, and washington will was really a hospital stay at that time. to work as many as 50,000 soldiers and sailors in the hospitals of washington, temporary hospital set up all over town. and of course those people started dying. and they had to be buried. so earlier in the war, a national cemetery was established at alexandria, virginia, and at the old soldiers home in northwest

washington. they were planned to accommodate all those who died in the washington area hospitals. what happened was that the war went on much longer and was much later than anybody expected. so that we pretty soon filled up the graveyard, the national cemeteries in alexandria. and at the old soldiers home and washington. and needed new burial space. so the quartermaster's office of the union army looked across the river and found this place, arlington and thought it would be a good place to begin burying people. arlington happened to be the home of robert e. lee, the confederate general, so not only was it a convenient place to begin military burials from theo be a matter of justice, maybe

even indication, if you want to call it that. the first material burials and the very first of those burials was a private from the 67 pennsylvania infantry, named william christman. he was a farmer. he was from a poor family and he came to serve in the union army. unfortunately, he ended up in hospital in washington. he got a case of german measles, which killed many, many service members on both sides of the war. he developed peritonitis from his measles infection, and he died in a washington hospital. was brought across the potomac river into arlington as the first military burial. things were so desperate at that time in the civil war, there

were so many people dying, that there wasn't much time for ceremony or ritual at arlington. they would bring people over for burial day after day after day. and they went into the ground as william christman dead with no flags flying, no bugles playing, all quite often not a chaplain to give him a sendoff. so basically we're just trying to keep up with the carnage from the civil war. >> there wasn't any time for tombstones that they had headboards. they were made out of pine or walnut, painted white with black lettering. those, of course, have to be maintained or they fell apart, so that in the years after the civil war we begin to clean up, we began to make sense of things. someone came up with the design

in the 18 '70s, late 18 '70s, ray 1800s, for the white marble tombstones you see at arlington today. it is a uniform design, anyone who qualified for burial here are qualified for one of these tombstones. the earliest stones were like these you see your, which have the name of the company, the state and the data burial, and inside the shield. later the design does have a fight just to include the name of the person, the date of birth and the data burial. that's the modern tombstone you see in other sections of the cemetery today. the first military burial here, william christman, was typical in that like many soldiers who died in the civil war on both

sides, he wasn't killed by a bullet or a cannonball. he was killed by a disease. most of the people who died in the civil war died from infections, dysentery, yellow fever, measles, mumps. than died from battle once. and most of the people you see in this section of the cemetery are in that category. william christman was buried in may 1864. arlington cemetery was not established until the month year, june 1864. and was officially designated and national cemetery, and it began to fill up very, very quickly. this part of the cemetery we're in, section 27, was called the lower cemetery. as you can see, it is at the edge of arlington. there is a road just to outside of the cemetery here. you can't see the only imagine

from this location, and that is the way the officers who were living and working in the lee mansion during the war wanted it. they didn't want to see the burials coming and. they didn't want to be living in a graveyard, working in a graveyard. they wanted these grades out of sight and out of mind. the quartermaster general, brigadier general montgomery mags, didn't like that idea. as a matter of fact, he didn't have much use for robert e. lee. they served together in the union army. meigs considered late a traitor and thought he should be hanged for his desertion of the union army at his leadership army of northern virginia. so meigs came to arlington on the day it was officially begun as a cemetery, june 1864. came to this part of the cemetery, looked around, and was

upset that there were no graves around the lee mansion. so his next act was to go up the hill where we will go shortly and to begin to put burials right up next to the mansion. he didn't want the least to be able to come back after the war was over. so you will see meigs' strategic approach to the creation of arlington cemetery. up the hill in mrs. lee's garden. >> we are now up on the hill overlooking washington, d.c., at the lee mansion. >> yes. >> and i am aiming the camera at mrs. lee's garden? >> yes, this is mrs. lee's garden, the highest point of arlington national cemetery. this is the home of robert e. lee, mary custis lee. before the civil war. and at the height of the civil war in 1864, the first of military burials were made in

the cemetery. the lower cemetery, out of sight of the mansion. quartermaster general didn't think that the grades were close enough to the mansion, so that he found officers who had died and he had them buried here around mrs. lee's garden to make it more difficult for the leaves to return to arlington after the war. >> if we walk along here we will see that these tombstones actually encircled the garden? >> yes, they don't go all the way around it but they form of border around part of the garden. i think they're something like, at the end of the war there was something like 40 grades of officers. and we don't do exactly what meigs' thinking was, but i suspect he chose to bury officers here rather than private, you know, and enlisted men. because it would make it more difficult to remove them after the war was over.

because they were more prominent and better known. so it was a strategic move on meigs part and approved pretty effective, because by the end of the war, there were not only these grades here but there were thousands of other graves at arlington and made a very difficult for the lee family to return here. >> did the lee family attempt to return? >> they never really attempted to return, but they wanted to get arlington back, and they worked for years. robert e. lee, after the war quietly met with his lawyers in alexandria, and discussed with them a way to get arlington back. mrs. lee, who was more bored surfers about it, went to congress after generally died and petition congress to get arlington back, and basically her petition was hooted out of congress. they thought it was a ridiculous idea. at that time radical republicans

were in charge of congress so they didn't give her a very good hearing. she died in 1873, her son, or hold a son, custis lee, went to congress, got voted down, then went to court and by 1882, he won a famous case in the supreme court. the supreme court ruled that arlington had been seized without just compensation during the civil war. and gave arlington back to the lee family. it took a while, but by 1883, the leaves had arlington back. of course, the bad news for the lees was there were 16,000 tunes here at the time so as a practical matter, they couldn't come back to later. so they settled with the government for fair market value, $150,000, 1100 acres of prime real estate, and 16,000

tombs on the banks of the potomac river. the great irony is that when custis lee signed the estate over, the title over to the federal government, custis lee on one side signing the title. on the other side was the secretary of war, robert todd lincoln, son of abraham lincoln. so that you had son of lee and the son of lincoln agreeing on something. and i would say that was the beginning of the some hope that we could reunite north and south again. it took a while, but that was the beginning of the reunion. >> so we're going to walk back here to the first tomb of the unknown soldiers? >> yes. one of the great traditions at arlington is honoring the unknown soldiers. lost in war. the first instance of that came just after the civil war when quartermaster general montgomery mags sen