Ray Anderson, the USA’s greenest CEO
Georgian native Ray C
Anderson was founder
and CEO of Interface.
The company was the first
to introduce carpet tiles
and modular carpet to the
USA market and after 20
years the company had
grown into a world leader,
valued at over US$1bn. In
1994 Anderson started to
consider the linear nature of
his manufacturing business,
in particular his use of virgin
petroleum to produce the
carpet fibre which would
016 Traffic Technology International November/December 2019
www.TrafficTechnologyToday.com
There’s a lot of talk about P3, public
private partnerships. We call this P4,
philanthropy being the fourth ‘P’
Allie Kelly |
partnerships. We call this P4, philanthropy
being the fourth ‘P’. We believe it’s
important to make things happen. In a
startup mode technology companies don’t
always have the bandwidth to work with the
public sector, the risks are too high and
costly, the DOTs constantly worry about
whether something will work. All the while
they don’t want to do anything that makes
driving less safe. There can be paralysis.”
Other projects in The Ray’s pipeline
include using the grass-covered land on
roadsides of the I-85 to build 2,600 solar
panels 40 feet from the edge of interstate
pavement. From there the grass will be
converted to pollinator-friendly ground
cover offering plants that provide habitat for
bees, butterflies and other insects that
pollinate our food supply.
“That will be the first pollinator-friendly
interstate roadside in the USA,” says Kelly.
“We are also resurfacing 13 miles of the
roadside using asphalt that recycles scrap
tyres. Then we’ll install road striping
designed for autonomous vehicle vision.
We’re trying to create infrastructure in the
roads as well as digital infrastructure for
connected vehicles.”
Dare to dream big
Kelly believes fervently that America has to
save more lives and that it is “inconceivable”
that nearly 40,000 people a year die on
America’s roads each year.
“Ray didn’t know how he would go
carbon neutral but he said he had to try.
And when it comes to a commitment to zero
deaths, I think we have to try,” she says.
“The Ray is about commitment to the ideal
and the daily journey, the openness, the
observation, the willingness to risk and ask
questions. That is a journey that Ray taught
us how to walk. Joining The Ray is about
what you make it. If you can contribute
ideas, funding, support, if you can open
doors, offer a window into your own work
or a technology that we can demonstrate on
The Ray, even if you can just spend 20
minutes riding the length of The Ray, we
need all of that. We need everyone to join
the movement.”
Find out about Panasonic’s ‘bilingual’, communicationprotocol
agnostic V2X tech, being tested in the Atlanta
Metropolitan Area, in this issue’s cover feature, page 38
facilitate the state’s growing deployment of
connected roadways. The partnership seeks
to trial connected technology that can then
be implemented across the state to improve
safety and efficiency, and reduce congestion.
“Most major OEMs have announced or
internally determined how they are going to
transition their vehicle models to be
connected,” says Kelly. “By 2022, it is
estimated that there will already be 105
million connected vehicles on the road with
the ability to broadcast every 10 seconds a
very specific packet of data standardized by
the US federal government and containing
information about latitude, longitude,
speed, status of transmission, the status of
your airbag set and more besides. We want
to take that information and make it useful.”
Data driven
Using a Panasonic data
management software
platform called Cirrus,
which collects critical data
and processes it into key
insights in real-time,
GDOT will trial the V2X
system that receives
information along The Ray
and transmits it between
state traffic roadway
operators and vehicles
equipped with V2X
technology. This should enable GDOT to
improve roadway safety, ease congestion
and identify maintenance needs.
“Georgia DOT is already deploying
thousands of roadside units in the metro
Atlanta area,” says Kelly. “In the end this is
about safety. The data gathered will allow
experts to understand crashes in a new way.
We may even be able to intervene before
dangerous conditions arise.”
The project, announced in August, is a
two-year program, tabled to fully demo its
data management capabilities next year.
For the greater good
“The progress we’ve made to date has been
achieved by bringing philanthropy to the
table to facilitate these projects with the
public and private sector,” says Kelly.
“There’s a lot of talk about P3, public private
Above: The Ray is testing
both on-road and
roadside solar power
solutions
eventually end up as landfill,
not breaking down for
hundreds of years. Anderson
felt what he described as a
“spear in the chest” moment
when he realized he was
taking resources from future
generations to make more
waste for landfill.
In the mid-90s he decided
to take the company to zero
waste and eliminate carbon
emissions, risking his billiondollar
enterprise to try mostly
untested methods. What he
found was that you could
do well by your business by
doing the right thing. “I am
doing well by doing good,”
was one of his sayings.
Anderson saved his
company US$400 million
and Interface became the
first company in the world
to reuse old carpet in the
manufacture of new. Here
was a man with two very
distinct halves to his career;
the first a success story of
a 1970s entrepreneur, the
second as a world pioneer
for corporate sustainability.
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