PRESQUE ISLE – Environmental responsibility and successful business can go hand in hand, according to a Guilford of Maine vice president who spoke Thursday at a business breakfast at the University of Maine at Presque Isle.

“We realize that we have a long, long way to go,” said Paul Paydos, vice president for technical services for Guilford of Maine and Interface Fabrics.

“But we are committed to being a leader in industrial ecology, a company that puts environmental performance on at least an equal footing with financial performance,” said Paydos.

Within the last five years, Guilford, a major fabric and carpet manufacturer, has been able to reduce its energy and water consumption, as well as the amount of waste it generates, while experiencing two years of record profits at the same time.

“At Guilford and Interface, we recognize that we are part of the problem,” Paydos said to about 50 people at the last business breakfast of the school year. “Or better yet, we are the problem.”

Paydos’ epiphany came several years ago when his boss, Guilford Chairman Ray Anderson, came to see the company as “a plunderer of the planet,” wondering what kind of world would be left for “tomorrow’s child.”

“And how do we want them to think of us?” said Paydos. “Certainly not as remote intergenerational tyrants.”

Paydos said he began extensive reading on the issue of man’s impact on the environment, which led him to the philosophy that man is only a strand in the web of life.

“Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself,” said Paydos, quoting literature written 150 years ago.

The textile executive cited several examples of how resources are being depleted at a frightening rate. In the last 140 years, mankind has used up half the earth’s total endowment of two trillion barrels, or 84 trillion gallons, of oil.

“We are using it faster and faster, and its formation was a one-time geologic event,” said Paydos, citing the continuous use of oil in daily life.

The depletion of the rain forest, cutting parcels the size of football fields every two seconds, and the world’s population growth also were cited by Paydos as examples of exhausting the earth’s resources as well as the millions of pounds of radioactive waste requiring storage for 500,000 years.

“In what language shall we write the storage instructions?” Paydos asked. “No language has ever lasted a tiny fraction of that time.”

Through his research, Paydos said he came to the conclusion that he wanted to do something to make a difference. As a result, the concept of “sustainability” is discussed a lot at Guilford, Paydos said. All employees participate in a four-hour, in-house training session on the subject, he said.

The company has defined sustainability as “conducting our lives and our work in a way that ensures a livable future,” Paydos said.

Although the company is not sustainable yet, “we have become a little less foolish” and have minimized the company’s waste stream, Paydos said.