The account of a corporate CEO realising, mid-career, that the industrial system he had helped build was also part of the ecological problem.

Anderson was the founder and head of Interface, a major carpet manufacturer, and this book traces his attempt to remake the company around environmental responsibility, waste reduction, closed-loop thinking, recycled materials, renewable energy and a less extractive model of enterprise.

It is very late-90s in some of its language, but that’s also what makes it interesting as a pre-climate-mainstream document from inside business culture, arguing that sustainability is not a side concern or branding exercise but a structural redesign problem. Good for readers interested in ecological economics, corporate sustainability, industrial design, green business, circular economy thinking, and the strange genre of CEO conversion narratives — capitalism looking in the mirror and trying, at least partially, not to flinch.

Paperback. Published by Peregrinzilla Press, copyright 1998 by Ray C. Anderson. First printing stated November 1998. Printed on recycled paper. Good second-hand condition.