Sustainability Pioneer Ray Anderson Dies

Championing the business case for sustainability became his mission.

Ray Anderson, founder and chairman of Interface Inc., died Monday. He had been lauded for championing the business case for sustainability for many years, having written and spoken extensively on the subject since 1994 after reading Paul Haken's The Ecology of Commerce.

Anderson, who was a senior fellow of the Design Futures Council, was a keynote speaker at the DFC's Leadership Summit on Sustainable Design in 2010. Sharing with the audience his personal health battle with cancer, he spoke passionately about the need for true sustainability and asked all Summit delegates to help fight the cancer of carbon.

"Ray has been a father-like inspiration to Greenway and the DFC," said Greenway Group Chairman and DFC Co-chair James P. Cramer. "He always believed in us and our causes."

Anderson was 77 when he died at his home in Atlanta.

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