So a project well worth the effort has finally begun gaining momentum: the Greening of DistinctiveFabric.com.

We've been working towards this for sometime now but time, energy and other miscellaneous resources had not allowed for much movement with this endeavor before. But now all the pieces have begun to assemble themselves and are clamoring for our attention so we are taking action.

There are many reasons to start and become, "Green". Here are some of our motivations:

1. Keep the Earth beautiful, it's such an amazing gift to us all, why not just help the planet?

2. Think beyond yourself and the present: what kind of world will we be leaving behind if our children have got to watch some Flash animation or YouTube video footage to experience the flight of some great bird of prey, go to a zoo, park or even plug into some virtual reality like Second Life to experience nature?

3. Reduce your energy and material goods consumption and save money while reducing your ecological footprint.

With the continued explosion of interest and activity from virtually every industry, most notably Al Gore's winning an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, it is clearly evident that the threat of global warming has moved beyond threatening to imminent crisis. And when Inc.com runs an article on the 50 most intriguing Green businesses, you know this is all serious business.

So what are we doing here at D.F. to reduce our Eco-print? Well, we've developed a number of initiatives including:

1. Remnants fabric sales - prior to these our damaged, wrinkled, out of stock, old dye lots, and other miscellaneous fabric scraps, pieces and yardage would either be thrown out, given away to friends and family or just cluttering up space in our warehouse. Now we sell them off at nearly, exactly at, or somewhere just below our cost which further enhances our product selection and satisfies many a customer's need for just the right piece at just the right price.

2. Carbon Offsetting - our 10,000 sq ft, shared warehouse (with 2 other companies, The Do Lab and Lucent Dossier), averages 1,800 KWH (electricity) a month; our percentage of consumption is about 40% or 720 KWH. There are are numerous vendors to choose from when purchasing your credits including CarbonFund.org, NativeEnergy.com and BeGreenNow.com, to name a few.

To date, we've used NativeEnergy.com to offset corporate air travel and BeGreenNow.com for executive home energy use, as well as to regularly calculate CO2 emissions for other projects. We've offset the total CO2 emissions for our warehouse from 2006 through CarbonFund.org and will be doing the same for previous as well as, future energy usage.

Together we, along with the other executives in our warehouse, have been looking into the use of REC's until we can take our warehouse off the grid by installing solar panels on our roof. We also limit the use of our main lighting as much as possible too and installed custom wiring and switches to further control this.

3. Green office supplies - when it comes to supply, we've found TheGreenOffice.com to be the leading source. With greater bulk ordering you can not only reduce your supply expense but you can also minimize your emissions from having to commute to your local office supply store, who often times doesn't even have what you set out for, resulting in a counter-productive trip.

Incidentally, they offset all the emissions associated with their shipping, something we're currently working towards also.

4. Packaging disposal - all of our cardboard and plastic waste is recycled jointly by local collectors, including both minority workers and the homeless. We also reuse nearly 99% of the fabric cores/tubes during inventory and in some order fulfillment, whenever possible. All of our office waste: paper, cans, glass, plastic, etc. are also recycled; toner/laser printer cartridges are stored for recycling or reuse.

5. Sustainable fabric sales - Organic hemp's, cotton's, silk's and many other great, natural alternatives (coming soon).

6. Carbon offsets - carbon offsetting options are available for any interested fabric shopper. Please contact us for additional information regarding this.

These are just some of the steps we've taken, so stay tuned for more!

There's no doubt that there's a bit of a curve to get yourself, your household or your company up to speed with fundamental Green principles but it is well worth the time and effort. This is just the beginning for us and we will be posting more information as new developments occur, with the aid of the Green Gurus.

(Aside from carbon offsetting any future orders, our next biggest project to tackle is the continued use of petroleum-based fabrics.)