Home Green Design Valley Forge Wins Sustainable Florida Best Practice Award

Valley Forge Wins Sustainable Florida Best Practice Award

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FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.— Valley Forge Fabrics, Inc. has been honored by Sustainable Florida with a Best Practice award in the Large Company Category. The winners were announced June 9 at an awards ceremony in Tallahassee. Sustainable Florida is an alliance of business, government, and civic leaders and organizations committed to defining excellence for Florida’s economic, environmental and social future. Winners of the Best Practice award were selected by an independent panel of nine representatives from private and public sectors involved in the sustainability movement.

Valley Forge, in business for 30 years, recently took a FRESH look at its business model. FRESH—Fabrics Redefining Environmental Standards (for) Hospitality— is a line of fabrics made from recycled PET plastic bottles (think water bottles.) This saves natural resources, especially since most non-recycled polyester is the fabric of choice for the hospitality environment and is made from petroleum.

Valley Forge is the only textile company to date that has an established reclamation process to facilitate the recycling of textiles. The fabric feels like cotton and exceeds all fire codes, abrasion, and longevity requirements for use in hotels. In addition to producing a green product, Valley Forge operates in a sustainable manner by greening its fleet and implementing a thorough internal recycling program.

Out of the companies from across Florida with 50 or more employees, there were 4 finalists: Wal-Mart Stores, Progress Energy, Carlton Fields, and Valley Forge.

More Than 70 Nominations Received

“Each nominee is outstanding and doing extremely innovative things to better the environment,” according to Tim Center, director of Sustainable Florida. “This year, the word ‘sustainability’ became part of everyone’s vocabulary. We received more than 70 nominations from across Florida. Each is a champion of sustainability and is leading by example. Among this group, Valley Forge Fabrics was an undiscovered gem in Florida. They have changed the economic landscape by doing great things for the economy and at the same time doing it environmentally. I was very excited to find out about Valley Forge’s good work and even more excited that they call Florida their home.”

Valley Forge’s award was one of seven categories of winners honored by Sustainable Florida during the 10th annual Sustainable Florida Awards program. Valley Forge will be recognized with a resolution on July 29 by Governor Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet. Since initiating the awards program in 1998, the Sustainable Florida Organization has recognized and honored deserving businesses, nonprofit organizations, government groups and individuals whose work is committed to the future success of Florida.

“We are so excited that Valley Forge was honored along with award recipients such as Rosas Farms and photographer Clyde Butcher, among others,” says Diana Dobin, senior vice president at Valley Forge. “The fact that we won this award is a testament to the Valley Forge dedication to our goals and a measurement of how much what we do with FRESH matters! So we are, of course, motivated to do even more!”

Sustainable Florida is an independent, non-partisan program of the Collins Center for Public Policy. The Collins Center is an independent, non-partisan, nonprofit and passionately committed to lasting results by finding smart solutions to important issues facing the people of Florida and the nation.

FRESH products are identified as recyclable through Valley Forge’s reclamation program by the ‘recycle symbol F’ on every FRESH product. Go to Valley Forge for more information.

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