LONDON—When it comes to carpet recycling and helping the environment, even England’s heir to the throne is a friend. That was the message brought home by Frank Hurd, chairman of the Carpet America Recovery Effort, ( CARE) and vice president/COO of the Carpet & Rug Institute, after attending The Prince of Wales’s Business & The Environment Programme (BEP) here.

Part of the University of Cambridge’s Programme for Sustainability Leadership, BEP was commissioned in 1994 by Prince Charles as a global forum for exploring and debating the business case for sustainable development.

Today it is considered “the best of its kind anywhere in the world,” noted Lee Scott, president and CEO of Wal-Mart. “It is remarkable to think that the Prince commissioned [this] nearly 15 years ago.”

Hurd first participated in a BEP meeting in 2003, when the group met in the U.S. He decided to attend again this year because, “This issue will have a tremendous effect on our industry, and understanding as many different perspectives as we can is always beneficial.”

During the meeting, Hurd had the opportunity to spend a few minutes with His Royal Highness and discuss what the carpet industry is doing with regard to recycling and reclamation.

He described the meeting as very positive, noting the Prince was “very gracious and engaging, with a good sense of humor and a firm handshake.” Hurd said it was obvious Prince Charles is genuinely interested in sustainability. For his part, the Prince said, “The key feature of the BEP has become the level of intellectual challenge that has been attained. This has been done quite deliberately by inviting only the most original and thought-provoking speakers and attracting the highest caliber of delegates. If the delegates return to work with a heightened awareness of the problems, a conviction that solutions can be found and the determination to play a full part in that process, then I suggest that the effort will have been worthwhile.”

Cambridge said the forum was developed because “more and more business leaders recognize their organizations must become sustainable in the true sense of the word if they are to survive in the long term.”

Complex economic, social and environmental pressures are encouraging companies to adopt sustainable practices. “Consumers, employees and other stakeholders are now more demanding, the investment community is increasingly aware of sustainability criteria as a measure of performance, and the impact business has on society is a growing focus for regulators and law makers.”

Not everyone sees this purely as a threat, the school points out. Rather, a growing group of business leaders recognize the business case for sustainable development is compelling and could, in the changing global economic climate, represent the key to competitiveness and profitability in the future. “They see the concept of sustainability as an overarching theme that brings clarity to complexity and provides a set of criteria that can be used effectively in their day-to-day work. They recognize that a constructive response to the pressing social and environmental concerns of society is both respected and expected by employees and other stakeholders.”

The challenge, though, is for business leaders to identify the strategic opportunities and identify what it means to run a sustainable business in practice. “This is new and sometimes difficult ground, and being a pioneer can often be a risky and lonely business,” officials state. “This unique forum brings leaders from across the world together to think, challenge and debate these vital issues.”

As the Prince himself noted to the delegation, “An understanding that we are not alone on the journey toward sustainable development is an important step in turning the process into reality.”

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