Closing the Loop at Interface

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Avi: [00:00:00] Welcome to Deep Green. I'm your host, Avi Rajagopal, the editor-in-chief of the Architecture and Interior Design Magazine, Metropolis. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Interface. For the last three decades, metropolis has been advocating for better spaces, buildings, and cities that make a positive impact on people in the planet.

And I'm so excited to announce that we recently released our first ever Metropolis interface, Sustainable Design Report, a deep dive into the state of sustainability in American architecture and design. Our partner in this endeavor is interface, a flooring manufacturer that has been a pioneer in helping to transform American manufacturing.

Since its visionary, founder Ray Anderson challenged the industry to do better. In the mid nineties, interface has been working hard to reduce its negative impact, draw down carbon emissions, [00:01:00] fight waste, and climate change, and help us transition to the circular economy. Joining me today from Interface are Jay Lanier, global Head of Market Sustainability, and Michael Davis, director of Global Market Sustainability to talk about the company's journey and its ongoing efforts around circularity.

Jay and Mikail, thank you so much for joining us today on Deep Green.

Jay: It's a pleasure to be here. Avi, thank you so much for having us.

Avi: So interface's journey in terms of addressing your environmental impact goes way, way back with Ray Anderson, assembling an eco Dream team in the early nineties.

You've spent about three decades addressing climate change. Can you give your listeners a brief overview? And then also tell us how circularity has started to become an important part of your efforts.

Mikhail: Yeah, so I think I, I will start with that one. The fun thing is that back when I was fresh outta college, I was an assistant to one of those Eco Dream team members.

I had a good ponytail going back when I had [00:02:00] hair, so I got to see late nineties interface, at least this sort of snapshot outsiders view of the the ferment that was going on to transform the company. It was a company that made a product that I had never really had a thought about before, which was carpet squares.

But suddenly everything was up for question. We're like, well, what if we made it upside down? You know, could we use less yarn and it would have a different look? And, and there was all of these, these crazy things in the air there in the late nineties one. What, 'cause this was after the organization had kind of turned a corner and really had started to get what their founder, who'd had this personal epiphany in 1994.

Took him a while before. They didn't just think he was crazy. You hear lots of funny stories about how, how crazy they thought he was back then before people really started to get it. By the time I was there in 1998, there was this excitement, there was this, you know, question everything. And so that's kind of where it began.

But, and in the middle of that, circularity was always part of [00:03:00] it. There's, uh, you know, in the original interface, corporate sustainability report, it's probably the first corporate sustainability report, certainly in, in the us. Uh, in 1997, Ray had this, you know, a little letter, which now of course, all CEOs write a letter at the beginning of your sustainability report.

That wasn't the thing back then. His letter was, uh, was pretty good. He laid out this vision, which absolutely includes circularity. He had talked about, ending the consumption of petro materials. You know, we look forward to the day when our factories will have no smoke stacks and no influence.

And he said, if successful, we'll spend the rest of our days harvesting yesteryear's carpets, recycling old petrochemicals into new materials and converting sunlight into energy. So you can see it's always part of the vision. Now, when we came back and revisited that 25 years later, we acknowledged that circularity.

Closing the loop. Still a really important strategy, but it did not go according to plan. Uh, so we, we did a report called Lessons for the Future, [00:04:00] 25 years later, and tried to distill what we'd learned in 25 years of really trying to go all out on sustainability and, uh, and circularity. One of the things we learned is that it was way harder than we thought.

Uh, and we sort of. You know, lifted, you know, the curtain on it and said, Hey, you know, some of our best years we got back 8% as much as we sold. You know, that's, you know, not what we expected. That is not raised vision seen to fruition. There's other things like the smoke stacks and then ending the liquid effluence.

That went really well. Even the renewable energy circularity still work in progress, so still plenty to talk about. There plenty that we've learned. But I think as we'll talk about today, it's it's all about how do we get onto the next stage of implementation? How do we make this real? Because it's been an idea we've loved, even if we didn't call it circularity back in 1997, it's been so key to anyone's vision of how we win, how we turn the corner on [00:05:00] sustainable design.

But how do we turn it from a great idea into a great reality? I think it's always

Jay: been a part. Of the key planks that were the foundation of interface's, sustainability, vision. Uh, we talked about some of the, the themes that showed up in that very first sustainability report three years after Ray's, real epiphany and spearing the chest.

And, uh, what we really kind of noticed with that was that, the connection between circularity and as we've become more focused on carbon was, was inherent, and I think there'll be plenty of time to unpack that a little bit.

Further, but so much of, of realizing that circularity, fortunately, being in a circle means that you can get on the carousel pretty much any point that you want. Meaning with inputs on your product, extension of life, of what's on the floor, as well as the end of life. That oftentimes becomes the real focus of the way people tend to think about circularity and the solutions that are in play.

But while sometimes deemphasizing the elements that are, um. That are available to [00:06:00] us to make a meaningful change right here and right now.

Avi: Jay, if we can stay with you for a second, looking at this from your customers or client's point of view. Right. Um, architects, designers, organizations, what makes flooring a good place to think about circularity?

Um, a lot of folks are thinking about how they can reduce waste and how they can be more efficient in how they use materials. Why should flooring be part of that strategy?

Jay: Yeah. There are several reasons why Avi, and the one that I like to start with has to do with the maturity of the industry. You mentioned the 30 year history of, of the process, and.

In some independent, some of the independent folks who have been wrestling with this in the GC side of things who are really committed to circularity. The cited names out of a recent report of kind of one of our shared acquaintances, uh, as structure Tone has really called out the flooring industry as being one of the few that really does have a, a meaningful take takeback program.

One of the other big reasons for it as well is when you think about the six sides of the [00:07:00] interior cube, if you will, if a room is a cube and we live on the inside of it. The only wall of that that we actually touch is the floor the floor is the one that we walk on. It's the one that we touch and provides the most opportunity for really expanding the elements of, of.

Working to build in performance for longevity being an important part of how that operates as well. But it also presents the challenges of being a composite material. So with those elements, in many cases outside of a few different types of commercial flooring, um, it really is a, um, a, a sticky challenge, but one that I think.

Really provides opportunity for cross-functionality and working with folks. If you're a designer in your firm and you're thinking, man, I really do want to incorporate sustainable circular design philosophies into a. Both the practice as a whole and maybe this project I'm focused on right now. I think the flooring provides a really good place to set an example for other trades [00:08:00] because of the maturity of the industry, which I'd like to believe that we had a hand in guiding, uh, to where we are over the course of the last 30 years.

And, um, and finding ourselves competing over having the, the strongest connection to circularity and sustainability as a whole, both with utilizing those recycled materials on the front end that you can specify today. Being the piece that has to perform over a long period of time. When we think about Nora Flooring, for example, I'm, I'm in my mid forties and the odds that I'll live to see the end of many of the Nora installations that might be happening this year are probably low.

Um, and I think that that's a real, a real testament to the performance in premium, uh, focus of that particular brand. So I think it's a great place to start because you've got touch points in the front end, the middle. At the end as well.

Mikhail: And I'll just add to that from, from the carbon footprint perspective, it's an important opportunity because for a renovation, you have certain heavy hitters.

If you're rebuilding the building, it's gonna be structural materials. If it's just a renovation, the flooring [00:09:00] actually really matters in terms of the overall footprint. And then it brings in circularity because one of the main ways that, if you look at, okay, is flooring a big party or carbon footprint?

Or is it actually pretty low? How much recycled material did you use? How much of this, this material that's more circular did you use often determines whether you're a, a very high footprint flooring or very low footprint flooring. It's a lot of petrochemicals, a lot of, you know, things that could be quite high footprint.

Unless you get them from the circular economy.

Avi: So obviously there is no way for us to be thinking about lowering the carbon emissions in the built environment, but also making a positive impact to the built environment without thinking about circularity. And as you both just argued, I think quite convincingly, flooring is a good place for us to focus on.

 Mikhail, in your opening remarks, you mentioned a 25 year report looking at, Circularity efforts over [00:10:00] the years. And Jay, you just said, you know, you got called out recently in a report for having, a takeback program. Flooring being one of the categories that has a strong TAKEBACK program, and of course interface is one of the pioneers in that.

Can you talk about your reentry program? Tell us sort of what the journey has been and. What you're doing with it today? Yeah.

Mikhail: It's interesting. The journey has, has gone from something that initially we were trying to be sort of technically outsource and, and find someone who could do something with the products we were taking back.

Just something where we realized we just had to invent a system from scratch in order to um, 'cause as in the circular economy, there's multiple moving parts always. So you have to figure out, you know, what could we do with this? Let's make sure if we do get it back, what can we do with it? Can we do something economical with it?

'cause that's how I say the circular economy has two interconnected, very important parts. There's a circular, like, could we circulate it? Then there's the economy part. Would [00:11:00] we circulate it? And so those are two interconnected challenges. So we've been working on that. I just, at the time I've been at Interface, which is about 15 years, I've seen about four generations of technology of trying to figure out like the most efficient way to reuse materials from a carpet tile we take back.

This is just for our US business. We have, of course, it's a regional challenge. Everywhere we operate in the world has to try to figure out what the best approaches. So I think one of the things you're, you're grappling with. And we can come back to this, is the fact that the product is not designed for recycling.

So people get confused about that, but in the abstract, you would never take that many different plastics and put them together that tightly if you were expected to pull apart each of them and recycle them separately, which is our traditional model. What we've actually done is designed a system that can tolerate and use a mixed material.

It's because we're not gonna redesign. The product is supposed Those layers are supposed to stay together. [00:12:00] So, of course the other part you have to have a logistics actually take it back. You have to have a system that people can actually use. And so tweaking the rules of that, of who pays for what So we, we have to, to find this, this just right thing to where we actually get material back, but we only, we get material back we can actually use, because the economics breakdown really quickly.

If you're taking back stuff you don't have a solution for, and if you have to like take back a material, then pay someone else to waste the energy, you know, incinerate it. That's not a business model, that's not economical, that's not a thing that you reliably will keep doing.

Avi: I think some of the challenges you've faced are kind of the structural challenges with recycling itself, right?

Um, and it's not just interface or the carpet industry or the flooring industry that finds itself with these problems. These are problems that, you know, exist across our manufacturing system and you know, is embedded in the way we use materials, I know you've had a long journey with your reentry program, but you've recently started just to see some really great successes, some bright [00:13:00] lights on the horizon.

You just completed, I think, your largest reclamation project to date. Jay, do you wanna talk to us about that?

Jay: Yeah, thanks, Avi. It the, the project in question that you're talking about is, is actually the Austin Convention Center. Um, and when we have opportunities like that one to work very closely hand in glove with the designers and the GC on that particular one, I believe Turner was really critical in getting this one back.

We wound up. Reclaiming 140, almost a hundred thousand pounds from that particular project. And that is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest one that we've had in our reclamation program, uh, which has been operating since 1996. Now, in some ways, you could say, man, I wish that that would, that was a, a, a bigger number, but it was acres of carpet tile that was brought back, and we'll be going back into the backing that.

Somebody somewhere in the Americas will likely be receiving over the course of [00:14:00] the, the, the coming months, which is really, really exciting for what that represents. And I think that particular project really highlights the best practices enough that it, I believe it got some references in breakouts at, um, at Greenville this year that I actually didn't intend to go and watch, watch them talk about our project on that particular side.

It was really nice to see though, as we were examining other examples of. Uh, either reuse or, uh, reallocation of previous, existing materials and several projects across the country this year. So that was a big, a big win, uh, one that we're proud of and the kind of thing that we want to use to, to stoke the fires and build more momentum.

On that particular front, because the, uh, the reality is, is we have the capacity to put more in our, in our product than, um, than we receive back. So there's more opportunity as we're seeing projects like that to, to continue to improve our, our formulation with greater degrees of post-consumer content.

Avi: the other exciting part of.

Interface with [00:15:00] circularity stories. So we've discussed, of course, durability, we've discussed, recycling is your use of bio-based materials. I remember being at a trade show in Chicago the first year. That interface introduced bio-based plastics into your product, what set you down that path and why are bio-based materials an important, you know, solution for the circular economy alongside producing really durable products and, you know, making sure we have a way to take them back and turn them into new forms?

Mikhail: Yeah, so, you know, 2017 we, we launched the prototype, which is what you will have seen. And this was our, you know, because the year before at NeoCon we launched our new mission, which was about. You know, not just, you know, our previous mission had been about, about doing zero harm, right? Gosh, that's not even enough.

We have to figure out a way. How would you run a company in a way that contributed to reversing global warming? And then we sent our r and d teams. We're like, okay, you've gotta show that it's possible for a manufacturer to make a product that [00:16:00] could contribute to reversing global warm. So of course that that first prototype, they went out and tested all these bio-based materials, which are all ways that nature has pulled carbon out of the atmosphere and turned it into something and figured out how to make something that looked like a carpet tile.

So that's the, that prototype, it had a negative two kilo per square meter. Uh, footprint. So they, they accomplished what they needed to performed for long on the floor. It was really expensive to produce the six or seven of them when we made, and the, for the prototype. So we had a lot of work to do to get that to commercialize.

Mm-hmm. Um, 'cause there were all these cool materials. We, we tested seashells, we tested stuff that basically was like rayon, but. Some of it was either not economical or, or not durable enough, but all of these things we sort of had to get into the world of what are the materials made from, captured carbon, and then narrow that through the screen of what could we actually economically turn into a high performance flooring product.

And, but of course the, where bio-based becomes important is Biobased [00:17:00] allows you to get beyond zero. Biobased allows you to store carbon in a product rather than recycled materials are always gonna be lower impact. Maybe even close to zero, but they don't necessarily get you into that, that world of potentially creating a positive carbon storing product.

And I also like to point out that that Biobased is leveraging the fact that nature already has a circular economy for carbon. And so at least the front end of that, we've already have this cycle going on where we have. Carbon going into the atmosphere, sometimes from nature, sometimes from us, and then we are cycling it out of the atmosphere, turning it into a leaf or a grass or a shell or, and so we're, we're leveraging that front end circular economy that nature already has, and then we just have to figure out how to make it work on the back end.

Make it work as a durable product, make it work as something you could take back and, and use and cycle again. But when you work with bio-based materials, you're starting out with something that's a bit more circular.

Jay: Yeah, I think that's really well put, Mika, and I think the, the system that we essentially have in place when we, when we are managing and talking [00:18:00] about our carpet tile, backings.

At this point in time reflects that, that, you know, the growth of those two platforms, one with a bio-based backing or our Seaquest bio line, and the other, which is essentially one of the very few that incorporates, uh, post-consumer recycled content, is now our standard backing. That was a big change we made over the course of the last 18 months, was moving to a space where, whether you wanted it or not, material that we've brought back from the field that has been pelletized and turned into our new backing as McKayla described earlier.

Is the separate track of that. And essentially that becomes a lower footprint, uh, system that allows us to serve, uh, a, a large number of our customers with a substantial, significant portion of it, but still something that we can continue to improve on of, of post-consumer recycled content of tiles that have already come back.

And then supplementing that as it stands with a bio-based system that allows us to drive towards negative in some of those capacities, there's still room to go. [00:19:00] In terms of kind of realizing that vision. But if you can bring one of those two product loops very low through recycling and circularity and meet the rest of the, the need for us to push towards carbon negativity in our products and as an organization as a whole with the bio base, you're gonna be able to find a nice balance between those two rather than over-reliance on one of those systems that couldn't take you as far as both working together.

Mikhail: But meanwhile, we have laws on the books in California that were now all carpet sold in California by 2028 has to have 5% post-consumer carpet material. I don't know what everyone else is gonna do, uh, but we're already on that track.

We have a very incremental, you know, amount of work to do to achieve that goal, uh, in California. Um, interesting to, to see that legislative mandate intersecting with a place we were already going, which is what you wanna be if you're a leader, is you wanna be the person that's not shocked by the, the change [00:20:00] in the legislative mandate because you are already trying to do the right thing.

Jay: And the fun part is that the formulation can go much, much higher than that 5%. A lot of it really comes down to making sure that we're getting enough back. It's a partnership situation. It's one that, um, we will need partners in the industry to continue to help with that, especially listeners to this podcast.

Readers of Metropolis are in a good position to help that along, for sure.

Avi: one of the structural problems with working towards circular economies that we all kind of have to pull together, right? Um, you have the technology to incorporate more than 5%, uh, post-consumer content. In your tile, uh, but you can't get to that 5%, not because you don't know how to get to 5% because you don't have enough material to get to that 5%.

and that can only happen as you just said, Jay, if like, you know. Your if [00:21:00] customers or people in the field are willing to recycle their carpet, right. Um, and so we need to close that loop. How are you talking about circularity with your customers and with the community at the moment? What has been resonating?

Do you see kind of enthusiasm out there in the marketplace for higher recycled content, for take back programs. Far bio-based materials,

Jay: I would say absolutely. We're seeing, we are seeing demand for it, and in many of our markets around the world, we are seeing circularity bubble to the top as, as maybe the first world word that people lean on when they are talking about what would've otherwise in, in our vernacular here in the US and around sustainability, it is starting to fit in as its own form.

Perhaps even superseding in some of the markets, the ideas of sustainability that we put forth. So the demand is definitely increasing, and there's a few ways to talk about it. A few of those are the hypothetical of best practices and those types of things, but there are tactical elements as well. When it comes to, say [00:22:00] you're being, say you're a designer and a firm, and you might have written into your specification in the interior's part of the construction documents that you would like for the material that's on the floor to.

To be handled in a certain way and and packaged in such a way that it will create a high likelihood that it can either be reused, perhaps, or go into, um, a take back program back into more materials that are there. Well, when your flooring contractor shows up on the job, it's already gone. Because there wasn't a specification that existed in the demolition spec, the division one side of things.

So if you are in your firm and you're thinking about the partnerships that you potentially can do to make that more likely, having something written into the specification with division one, where the demolition contractor might be looking to get the job done, all of those pieces on the front end make it a much more competitive process for saying, Hey, yeah, we can do that.

It'll cost as much, but you're at least on a level bid rather than trying to figure out. By the [00:23:00] time we're considering the finishes package that we need to make a change on what might be happening with demolition, and then it's a change order, then it's a dragging of feet and more challenging because it wasn't planned for in the first place.

So kind of thinking through the operational side of take back in a project is, is a really important part, and we're seeing that as a fairly easy place to start. As I think most serious manufacturers have a specification that you can kind of plug and play that allows that to happen with just, Hey, put this in your division one and it'll set you up in a really strong way.

I think the other portions, that, um, are really, really important, kind of come down to. Elements on the floor of the practical part after the design is done, when the end user has it. So this is kind of a message to the people who are owning materials on the floor right now, that the way your products are designed for longevity, both from a design standpoint and a performance standpoint, are incredibly important.

I am always inspired by coming back [00:24:00] to some of the designs that we offer that with, with the help of, of. Biomimicry started to incorporate a degree of random design that allows for true replacement of the tile as a one for one rather than, Ooh, that's a sore thumb effect, and that once again lends itself to the longevity of the product.

Over time, and if it is something that our market moves in the direction of wanting to explore, reuse, instead of just recycling the ability to have a non-directional or non dialogue product pulled off of the floor, where maybe the 10% that's most badly worn is, is discarded and sent to recycling, but the other 90% is potentially ready to be reused.

That pattern once again covers. By having a degree of randomness, the existing wear patterns or direction of install, and allows for a much more forgiving system for reuse, either in small portions, if it's within your, your individual ownership situation, or if it's going out to another client after it's already been loved, but it's [00:25:00] time to move on from that particular design.

Mikhail: Yeah, I would just add that I, I mentioned our product is not designed for recycling. It's actually very well designed for repair and reuse. So as what Jay was describing, in, in the sort of circular economy, re lexicon would be repair or refurbish.

Like, Hey, we can just replace these 10 tiles right in the entryway. Uh, and if you design it well, you can replace it without it being obvious that that's the patch. Um, you've put in a, a randomized pattern, um, that already works. You had a, a product that wore well on the floor, so. A new tile looks substantially similar to an to an old tile 'cause old tiles were well on the floor.

But also similarly, if you decide we're done with this, we're gonna lift it all up. Probably most of those still have life left in them and can be reused. That said, it goes to another challenge in that no one wants to transport them very far. So you have to have a local reuse partner. You have to have someone who has a a model.

And we do have this in certain areas, but it's very, very local. Like some people have a [00:26:00] business model and have it figured out that there's a market for it but with the modularity, with the way it's designed in modules, you have that potential. At least you've still gotta build the market locally and get the logistics and the economics working.

Avi: I think, um, it makes sense to some extent that circularity will always retain some of that local element. It has to be kind of contextual in certain parts, but. The approaches, I think, need to become standardized. So we have to normalize the idea that if we're pulling up a floor, we're at the same time looking for that local reuse partner who will take it.

Right. Some of those things I think. And then Jay of course mentioned the demolition spec. I think there's lots of ways in which we need to normalize this and there's huge appetite to do this. I mean, I think, um, for our. You know, sustainable design report that Metropolis and Interface, um, collaborated on.

Um, we did do a survey of, you know, architects and designers, um, within Metropolis audience. 65% over two thirds said circularity was really important to them in their design process. They were incorporating it, [00:27:00] whether, you know, moderately to extremely important, they were taking it into consideration. So we have this appetite out there and I think we have to give them tools.

You've mentioned lots of ways to do that over the course of this conversation. If you were to think about the one or two really key things that we need to scale up circularity in the built environment. What would those be and how can interface continue to be a partner in the industry to, as part of that scaling up?

Jay: It's, uh, it's the biggest question on the table, and the solutions to that are, are not always things that I, I'm as comfortable with as I would like to because they involve the engagement of others. And the, the real answer is that regulation can set a floor. Underneath a lot of what the expectation, I think you're seeing that taking place in California.

We're not, but a couple from New York. Yeah, exactly. Being the case in New York as well, by setting a floor forward. I I, I will tell you, I received an email [00:28:00] today, this morning, just kind of referencing. Hey, we're, we're a dealer and we install flooring. We're in the new Jor, the, the New York, New Jersey market, and we know that the demand for this is coming.

Would you like to have a conversation about how we can game plan for that kind of thing? So knowing that the rules are changing for businesses that I think want to do the right thing, but don't always know where to start, oftentimes that extra nudge in setting a floor under what the, the expectations of the industry are, go a long way.

But there's certainly elements. Cooperation and collaboration as well. And I will say that competition is the first thing we tend to think of in industry is like, we wanna win specs, we wanna make sure that it's ours that's going in. We feel like that offers the, the better outcome from a sustainability standpoint.

But there are certain parts of this where we need to. Likely start thinking about ways that we, we can work more closely together. And you see that certainly with a lot of our, our industry groups and, and ways that that can take place [00:29:00] and kind of shaping these to work well where. There's opportunity for collaboration.

But I will say that my first, first instinct coming up through the, the interface sales organization, it's something you have to stop, check yourself and say, yes, if we can find opportunity for working within our industry to create better outcomes for customers, for buildings and for future generations, then I think that's still incumbent upon us to do that as well.

Mikhail: I, I think it's a continuous process of removing obstacles because all it takes in to have the circular system breaks down is to have, have the flow stop anywhere in the cycle. And you know, if someone, as I say, if you know. Circularity requires collaboration to such an extent where if one person stops collaborating, one piece of this, you know, cycle, the whole thing becomes linear immediately, and that material probably stops and then goes to that linear place, the landfill.

And so you, you have to have this, this different level of collaboration in a system among partners [00:30:00] that it is not, no one controls the whole cycle. And so you have to have these, these different ways to collaborate. I think we will have to, you know. That is one of the things that legislation is forcing.

As much as the industry is always ambivalent about legislation, that legislation has shown probably the, you know what industry doesn't want to know, which is you take a product category like carpet where the recycling rate in every other state is hovers around 1% and it's over 36% in California. So it's kind of the exception that proves the rule.

Like without legislation this probably won't happen At scale one data point we have supports that idea. Um, and it's not working perfectly. I'm out in California. I'm very involved in this. But we are seeing material move away from the landfill in a way that is not happening in any other state. And that, of course, then creates opportunities for local entrepreneurs, for, for businesses in this space.

And I think hopefully, we'll, we'll see more of that because it's still very fine margins. People are trying to figure out [00:31:00] how to make this opportunity into an actual business model. Some of them are very small and local at this point. But we now have options we never had. When we pull material out of a a project in California, we have people who want it for reuse, for car tile, or we can send it back to Georgia for recycling.

We gotta decide what the best option is, but it's great to have options, which we don't necessarily have at that level anywhere else.

Avi: That's fantastic. I know this is challenging work and I know that, you know, we are trying to bring about large scale systemic change in our industry, but. A lot of what you've said today gives me so much hope, right?

To even hear that recycling made in California, to know that people are looking to reuse, to hear about, you know, better backing options, becoming your default options, knowing that your clients, when they, they select carpet tile, they're automatically supporting your efforts towards circularity. All of that just adds up, I think, to a forward-looking direction.

And [00:32:00] that's for in from interface's point of view certainly. But from the industry point of view, we're seeing this as Jay pointed out, and we saw in our survey results a much larger appetite to try and work on this problem together. It's just, uh, and that's what it's gonna take. We can't have that circle break out at any point.

As Micha pointed out, this has been wonderful talking to both of you and understanding a little bit more about the hard work you're putting in at Interface across so many different dimensions. To support a transition to the circular economy. Thank you so much, Jay and Micha for joining me today.

Jay: Thanks, Avi.

Yeah, absolute pleasure. Thanks, Avi.

Avi: Deep Green is produced by the Surround Podcast Network. This episode was produced by Rachel Santo, with support from Rob Schulte, Lauren Volcker, and Verity Lister. We're talking about the state of sustainable design in the United States over the next couple of months on Deep Green. So catch our next episode soon, wherever you get your podcasts.

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