By Paul Hawken at GreenBiz.com

Seventeen years ago he had a realization. At that time, Ray came home. He rediscovered a sacred earth with all its complexity, beauty and mystery, free from the constraints of this or that ideology, free from narrow-minded thinking, and he was freed to reimagine the relationship between humanity and nature with Interface as the model. No longer were there human systems and ecosystems. They were one system and he understood that the laws of physics and biology prevailed. He believed in Emerson’s words, that there is an innate morality in the laws of nature: I have confidence in laws of morals as of botany. I have planted maize in my field every June for seventeen years and I never knew it to come up strychnine. My parsley, beet, turnip … acorn, are as sure. I believe that justice produces justice, and injustice injustice. Ultimately, Ray’s work was not about making a sustainable business, it was about justice, ethics, and honoring creation. Zero waste was the path to 100% respect for living beings.

Continue reading the eulogy, “Reimagining the World Was a Responsibility“. Ray Anderson died last week at the age of 77. We have previously blogged about him here.