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. But now all the pieces have begun to assemble themselves and
are clamoring for our attention...

There are many reasons to start going "Green". Here are some of my personal motivations:

1. Keep the Earth beautiful, it's such an amazing gift to us all, why squander it?
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 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 DF to reduce our eco-print? Well, we're developing 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 nearly 10,000 square foot 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, I've used NativeEnergy.com to offset my air travel, (see my full description via my How To on Dianovo.com)
and BeGreenNow.com for home energy use, as well as to regularly calculate CO2 emissions for other projects. I will
be offsetting the total CO2 emissions for our warehouse later today via CarbonFund.org to evaluate their service.

The other two sites quoted us this to offset our emissions:

BeGreenNow.com:
Total CO2 metric tons to offset: 6.2 metric tons
Total credits required to offset your CO2: 7 credits
Cost per Credit: $14.00
Total cost: $98.00

NativeEnergy.com:
Your carbon footprint household average (based on 10) is 14098 lbs. [7.05 short tons] of carbon dioxide per year.
This is equivalent to 1410 lbs. [0.7 short tons] per person.
Total cost: $84.00

The other executives from the companies above and I are also looking into the use of REC's until we can take the
warehouse off the grid with solar panel installations on our roof.

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.

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

4. Sustainable fabrics - Organic hemp, cotton, silk and many others coming soon!

Anyway, these are just some of the steps we've taken. 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 the
Greening principles but it is well worth the time. This is just the beginning for us and I will be posting more about all
of this as new developments occur. Aside from carbon offsetting any future orders, our next biggest project to tackle
is our waste which includes massive amounts of cardboard, paper, plastic bags and straps and toner cartridges for
our laser printers.

If anyone has any experience with this or just some great common sense that might aid us in managing these items,
we'd love to hear from you!