Organizational Governance

Interface Commits to Carbon Negativity, Without Offsets, by 2040

The sustainability leader sets out to hit its climate goals through direct carbon reduction and carbon storage — and challenges industry peers to do the same.

Published 7 months ago | About a 4 minute read

Image: Interface

Interface, Inc — a global leader in sustainable flooring solutions — has announced a new focus on direct carbon reduction and carbon storage to meet the urgency of the climate crisis. The company is aligning its strategy to meet its climate commitments without the use of carbon offsets.

As we edge dangerously close to triggering several critical climate tipping points, absolute emission reductions become more and more critical to addressing the crisis. Beginning in 2025, Interface says it will repurpose former offset investments to accelerate innovation in direct carbon reductions and carbon storage both internally and throughout its supply chain.

“We’re ‘all in’ on solving the climate crisis. We’ve made incredible progress in our 30-year sustainability journey, and we’re committed to achieving our ambitious environmental-sustainability goals without carbon offsets,” said Interface CEO Laurel Hurd. “Carbon-negative carpet tile changed everything for Interface. We now know it’s possible to store more carbon than we emit; and we believe we can accomplish this across our product portfolio — from carpet tile to resilient flooring.

“We want to challenge ourselves and others to become carbon negative, enterprise-wide, without offsets. We hope to continue to inspire industry to join us to make an even bigger impact through our collective action focused on absolute carbon reduction.”

Interface’s carbon-reduction plan

Interface offers the lowest-carbon carpet tiles in the industry, based on publicly available emissions data in Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). The company has made dramatic progress through three decades of innovation in carpet tile manufacturing, raw material sourcing, collaboration with suppliers, and a focus on the full lifecycle of its products — including restoration, to keep products in place; as well as programs for reuse and recycling across the globe. It has continued to raise the bar for corporate sustainability through initiatives including Climate Take Back and Factory as a Forest, as well as its work with Biomimicry 3.8 to create a practical framework for regenerative business.

Interface is applying these unique and market-leading approaches to its resilient flooring and operations to accelerate improvements across its entire product portfolio.

Examples of current and future initiatives for potential additional investment include:

Reimagining product development and manufacturing to drive carbon reduction and storage
Reducing the carbon footprint of resilient products through manufacturing and raw-material innovations and increasing recycled content
Increasing the use of biobased materials across all product categories
Exploring opportunities and supply chain partnerships to address Scope 3 emissions
Identifying and driving commercial adoption of circular models across all product categories.

“Our carbon plan is simple: Avoid. Reduce. Store. Inspire,” said Liz Minné, Head of Global Sustainability Strategy at Interface. “We’re doubling down to store more carbon than we emit across our entire enterprise. We’re avoiding and reducing emissions throughout our product manufacturing, our business operations and our supply chain; and working to store more carbon in our products. We’ve been charting this course for 30 years; and we won’t stop until we achieve carbon negativity, without offsets, by 2040. And we hope we inspire others to do the same.”

Interface’s climate goals

Interface will focus its efforts on direct carbon-reduction and carbon-storage innovation projects to meet its ambitious environmental-sustainability goals, which include:

By 2030, to achieve its science-based targets to halve its absolute Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions; to halve absolute Scope 3 emissions from purchased goods and services; and to reduce business-travel and employee-commuting emissions by 30 percent, all from a 2019 baseline year.
By 2040, to become a carbon-negative enterprise, without offsets.

Carbon-offset program updates

As of April 30, 2024, Interface will discontinue its Carbon Neutral Floors™ and Carbon Neutral Enterprise programs to increase project budgets as the company continues to identify opportunities for decarbonization in a rapidly evolving market for climate solutions. The company will offer verified carbon credits for all customer purchases through the end of 2024.

Interface’s calculations and carbon footprint data are third-party verified — including full lifecycle impacts of its products and Scope 1-3 emissions of its business, without offsets. These verified impacts are reported in EPDs, product specifications and annual EcoMetrics and impact reports.

For more information on Interface’s sustainability journey and the company’s climate ambitions, go to http://www.interface.com/allin.