A Fresh Start

After a long and tiring flight, you finally arrive at your hotel, exhausted and out of sorts. You roll your suitcase up to the reception desk, check in, and receive a key to a room described as luxurious and spacious with a big comfy bed…and sheets made out of plastic bottles?

At first, you might think twice about snuggling up in this bedding, but then you'd wake up and realize that in this current global climate, eco-responsibility is a way of life. Valley Forge Fabrics has heeded this call to being environmentally conscious. One of the largest suppliers of hospitality fabrics in the world, the company founded the Fabrics Redefining Environmental Standards (for) Hospitality™ (FRESH) fabric line. FRESH products are made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled polyester; some are 100 percent pre-consumer polyester or a blend of the two. Valley Forge chose recycled polyester because of its inherent FR traits. It also absorbs the company's eco-friendly, water-based dyes very easily.

"This was kind of a journey that started in 2005," says Diana Dobin, Valley Forge Fabrics vice president, design and sales. "Customers were asking our sales people what our company was going to do about the environment." The company got together and discussed the question of whether or not sustaining the environment was part of its responsibility. "We all did our research and each took a little bit of the pie—waste, water, air, energy," says Kimberly Roeser, director of sales at Valley Forge Fabrics.

The team then took on a newfound goal of doing what it could to save the planet. "Our ability to push our suppliers to develop and for us to invest in yarns became our mission," says Dobin. According to Michael Dobin, vice president of development, Valley Forge had always had recycled content throughout its product line but never had a mission for sustainability.

As suppliers began to come to Valley Forge explaining what was possible and what wasn't, the company decided that it handled a big enough quantity of fabric to create what the suppliers thought wasn't possible at the time, explains Michael Dobin. So Valley Forge set up three rules:

1. Everything had to be 100 percent recycled.

2. Everything had to be redefined each year.

3. Everything had to be recyclable and needed to have a reclamation program.

"The reclamation part is one of the most satisfying," says Diana Dobin. "We ship millions of yards a year, so we want to play a role in keeping those products out of the landfill. Numbers are staggering in the hotel world. Duvets are replaced every 18 months to two years. They're just thrown in the garbage. We can save millions of pounds."

"With every move a lot of us make now, we wonder how it will make an affect," says Roeser.

"We looked at our energy use, the amount of water we use. We had an outside auditor evaluate how much carbon monoxide goes into the air when we make shipments. All of our shipments are now carbon neutral," Diana Dobin says. And if the carbon emissions can't be diminished enough, the company purchases carbon offsetting.

Valley Forge has converted to hybrid cars and instituted mandatory recycling on the premises. "It's a big powerful initiative in our company, and it's amazing because everyone wants to be a part of it," says Diana Dobin. There is no recycling pickup in South Florida, but some employees said they would do the drop off themselves. Currently, Valley Forge is paid by Southeastern Recycling to have their recycling taken away once a week, which counteracts all the money spent on recycling efforts within. Circle No. 201