Ray Anderson is the CEO of Interface Corporation, a carpet tile manufacturing company with $1.1 billion in annual sales and 38 percent of the global market for carpet tiles. In 1994, Anderson vowed to change Interface into a sustainable business. Formerly, Interface was a company that merely complied with environmental regulations and through that compliance put 5 billion tons of carpeting in landfills.

Anderson sees Interface as a company that was abusive to the environment: It relied on petroleum both to power its production and as a material input for synthetic carpets; it produced large amounts of carbon emissions in the process; and it used large amounts of water for dyeing carpet. Anderson vowed to transform Interface into a company that would take nothing out of the earth that could not be recycled or regenerated, or that would harm the biosphere. The company switched its business model from selling carpeting to leasing floor-covering, and now accepts responsibility for the entire life-cycle of its product.

The story of Interface is well known because it has been a success. The company decreased its use of fossil fuels by 45 percent and its net greenhouse gas production by 60 percent. It uses one-third the water it used to, and cut its contribution to landfills by 80 percent. By many important measures, Interface is an environmental success. But because its sales are up 49 percent, Interface is also a business success.

In light of global climate change, what must businesses do to maintain sustainable business practices? What are businesses' environmental responsibilities? Is redesigning business a moral responsibility?

There are several ethical aspects to these questions. In what follows, I focus on the moral responsibility of businesses to change, as Interface did, from taking lightly their responsibility to the environment, to becoming sustainable. I sketch three arguments that support the position that businesses have a moral responsibility to move toward sustainability.