If Interface Fabrics Group has its way, the textiles covering the next office chair you plunk down on will be made from a corn product rather than raw materials derived from petrochemicals.

Playing a pivotal role in the development of environmentally friendly products, Interface’s Guilford and Newport facilities are using Yankee ingenuity to turn acid fibers made from corn into textiles. Along with its support for agriculture, the company is an industrial leader in environmental stewardship.

“Interface Fabrics Group, a subsidiary of Interface Inc., has recognized the significant environmental harm caused by the first industrial revolution and we accept the challenge of leading the second industrial revolution, a revolution that is focused on being in balance with nature rather than taking and wasting from nature,” said Wendy Porter, Interface’s director of environmental management.

The Guilford company, formerly known as Guilford of Maine, which produces about 13 million yards of high-quality fabric a year for office furniture, including wall coverings, is one of seven divisions in the Atlanta-based Interface Fabrics Group, all of which produce woven textiles for commercial, institutional, residential and automotive markets. About 500 people are employed in the two plants and corporate headquarters are located in Guilford.

Actually, the local company’s role in heralding in a new environmentally friendly industrial era began several years ago when it pioneered the manufacture of its Terratex brand fabric from fiber derived from recycled plastic soda bottles, according to Paul Bolin, human resources manager.

The company recognized in the mid-1990s that changes were needed in the manufacturing processes to maintain the company’s existence, Bolin said. This recognition caused the development of an EcoMetrics environmental system that eventually led the company to reduce water and energy consumption, reduce carbon emissions and solid waste, and shifted the company’s change in raw materials usage.

“We believe that to be sustainable, we need to use our materials in a way that is in balance with nature,” Porter said. “If you look at our impact on the environment as a footprint, then sustainability is taking the initiative to make sure that footprint is as light as possible, if it has to leave a mark at all,” she said.

Porter said Interface thinks the marketplace wants attractive interiors, but doesn’t necessarily want them made of petrochemicals.

Taking an approach different from other manufacturers, Interface Fabrics Group tries to understand what its customers truly value and develops a product that meets or exceeds those values in a way that least affects the environment, she said.

So part of the company’s lesson plan is to point out the differences between products made with petrochemicals, basically petroleum or natural gas, and those made with technical or biological nutrients.

“We strive to develop products that are either biological nutrients or technical nutrients,” Porter said. A biological nutrient, like the fiber made from corn, becomes a food or a nutrient for the environment when it reaches the end of its useful life. Technical nutrients, like soda bottles, are materials that can be reused in the same process for which they were intended or which can feed an infinite number of other processes – thus ideally never becoming a waste, she said.

It takes about 15 yards of fabric to make a standard office cubicle, Porter said. To make that amount of fabric requires the use of 305 recycled plastic soda bottles.

While recycled plastic soda bottles work well to produce the fabrics, it is still a man-made compound and is not totally biodegradable, according to Porter. So the company is now engaged in cutting-edge research and product development to find the correct balance that will “close the loop,” or recover the fabric and remake it into fabric or some other value-added product. Progress on this “fabric take-back” program dubbed ReSKU (pronounced as rescue), can be followed by customers and the public on the company’s Web site, www.resku.com.

“By and large, we’ve changed the marketplace through educating customers and introducing new environmental friendly products,” Porter said. She noted that the company’s progress is driving other manufacturers to produce similar products. Still, she believes that Guilford will be the first in the marketplace this spring with the new fabric.

Guilford town officials have lauded the company’s accomplishments. Town Manager Tom Goulette, who nominated the company for a 2004 EPA Environmental Merit Award, said recently, “It’s as though ‘catch-and-release’ has come to the textile world.”

Goulette said Interface was the town’s leading taxpayer and a great corporate citizen.

“Foremost in their philosophy is the vision for a healthier environment for future generations, a vision that is beginning to catch on and became shared by many other players in the manufacturing world,” Goulette said.

What’s amazing, Goulette said, is that the company has reduced its solid waste by 86 percent in just a few years and now represents no more than the amount produced by a single large family. In addition, the company’s production of dyes and chemicals that are environmentally benign was largely responsible for cleaner water in the Piscataquis River. Years ago, the river used to turn orange or blue most days, depending on the work done at Guilford.

These changes in manufacturing processes in recent years have come at a particularly difficult financial time, according to Bolin. The overall textile market has been extremely soft. Still, if a company doesn’t make capital improvements and invest in employee training, it will have a limited life span and no sustainability, he said.

To bring about some of the changes, Interface Fabrics Group tightened its belt, including closing a factory in Dudley, Mass., and moving some of the jobs last month to Guilford. A $42,000 state grant was obtained to train the new employees for the local weave room operations.

The company could have moved its operations to foreign soil as other textile manufacturers have done to avoid environmental laws and for cheaper labor. But Bolin said the company did not because it has high-quality talent and dedicated employees who support the company’s commitment to the environment.

In fact, some of those objectives that the company laid out several years ago for its sustainability have paid big dividends and have helped the company move forward, Bolin said. Computerizing some of the production processes has allowed the company to reduce water consumption. That and less energy consumption have led to significant reductions in solid waste generation and carbon emissions.

By using recycled plastic soda bottles from 1996 to 2001, the Guilford facilities eliminated the use of 484,150 barrels of fuel oil, or about the amount of oil it takes to heat 22,382 U.S. homes for a year, which is about the number of houses in Bangor.

Porter also said bulbs were removed in areas where excessive lighting was not necessary, including the vending area.

The work force also was empowered to contribute to changes by turning off lights, computers and equipment when not in use.

Interface is also participating with Bonneville Environmental Foundation in Oregon to support the development of wind power in an effort to make up for the nonrenewable resources it still uses.

These steps taken by the company have brought much recognition. The company received the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Pollution Prevention in 1998. Four years later, the company was one of four in Maine to pioneer a new Maine Department of Environmental Protection environmental excellence program known as Step-Up. And equally significant, the Guilford company was accepted by the U.S. Environment Protection Agency into its National Environmental Achievement Track Program, which recognized the company for leading by example and modeling the way to environmental excellence.