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UPthEM – Upskilling Pathways for Employability
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alternative to the take-make-waste industrial system that so dominates our civilization, and is
the major culprit, stealing our children's future, by digging up the earth and converting it to
products that quickly become waste in a landfill or an incinerator -- in short, digging up the
earth and converting it to pollution.

According to Paul and Anne Ehrlich and a well-known environmental impact equation, impact
(I) -- a bad thing -- is the product of population (P), affluence (A) and technology (T). That is,
impact is generated by people, what they consume in their affluence, and how it is produced.
And though the equation is largely subjective, you can perhaps quantify people, and perhaps
quantify affluence, but technology is abusive in too many ways to quantify. So the equation is
conceptual. Still it works to help us understand the problem.

So we set out at Interface, in 1994, to create an example: to transform the way we made carpet,
a petroleum-intensive product for materials as well as energy, and to transform our technologies
so they diminished environmental impact, rather than multiplied it. Paul and Anne Ehrlich's
environmental impact equation: I is equal to P times A times T: population, affluence and
technology. I wanted Interface to rewrite that equation so that it read I equals P times A divided
by T. Now, the mathematically-minded will see immediately that T in the numerator increases
impact -- a bad thing -- but T in the denominator decreases impact. So I ask, "What would move
T, technology, from the numerator -- call it T1 -- where it increases impact, to the denominator
-- call it T2 -- where it reduces impact?

I thought about the characteristics of first industrial revolution, T1, as we practiced it at
Interface, and it had the following characteristics. Extractive: taking raw materials from the
earth. Linear: take, make, waste. Powered by fossil fuel-derived energy. Wasteful: abusive and
focused on labor productivity. More carpet per man-hour. Thinking it through, I realized that
all those attributes must be changed to move T to the denominator. In the new industrial
revolution extractive must be replaced by renewable; linear by cyclical; fossil fuel energy by
renewable energy, sunlight; wasteful by waste-free; and abusive by benign; and labor
productivity by resource productivity. And I reasoned that if we could make those
transformative changes, and get rid of T1 altogether, we could reduce our impact to zero,
including our impact on the climate. And that became the Interface plan in 1995, and has been
the plan ever since.

We have measured our progress very rigorously. So I can tell you how far we have come in the
ensuing 12 years. Net greenhouse gas emissions down 82 % in absolute tonnage. Over the same
span of time sales have increased by two-thirds and profits have doubled. So an 82 % absolute
reduction translates into a 90 % reduction in greenhouse gas intensity relative to sales. This is
the magnitude of the reduction the entire global technosphere must realize by 2050 to avoid
catastrophic climate disruption -- so the scientists are telling us. Fossil fuel usage is down 60 %
per unit of production, due to efficiencies in renewables. The cheapest, most secure barrel of
oil there is the one not used through efficiencies. Water usage is down 75 % in our worldwide
carpet tile business. Down 40 % in our broadloom carpet business, which we acquired in 1993

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