It was with great sadness that I saw the news that Ray Anderson, Chairman of Interface, had died yesterday. I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr Anderson, and only heard him speak once at an Interface event. But I recommend his book, Confessions of A Radical Industrialist to every other person I meet, included an interview with one of his senior European directors in The Green Executive, and included Mr Anderson as the only industrialist (so far) on Green Gurus where I concluded:

Ray Anderson is in many ways an unlikely green guru. An industrialist, a Southern Gentleman, self deprecating and almost impossibly polite, he is as far from a tree-hugging tub thumper as you could imagine. But nobody else has delivered green business improvements on this scale. He has taken the theories of gurus like Amory Lovins and Janine Benyus and demonstrated that if done correctly they do make good business sense. By transforming an archetypal ‘dirty’ industry such as floor coverings, he has demolished the excuses from other sectors that it can’t be done. And he is committed to spreading the world, reportedly delivering around 150 speeches and interviews a year. When it comes to industry, Ray Anderson is the green guru.

I don’t have many heroes, but Ray Anderson was one of them. One of a kind and an inspiration. I’ll end with his words:

“If we can do it, anyone can. If anyone can, everyone can.”