EN29: Significant environmental impacts of transporting products and other goods and materials used for the organization’s operations, transporting members of the workforce

Transport of Goods Toward the end of 2009 we had begun to use a new port in Wilmington, NC, which was 600 miles closer to our distribution facility than our prior port. It was in 2010 when that change lived up the to estimated savings we had projected: by changing ports to one that reduced the trucking distance for our products, we reduced our diesel fuel usage by 46,063 gallons, or 4,761 tonnes of CO2e.

In addition, in 2010 we began direct-to-customer shipping program as well as a direct drop-off shipment system for a number of our customers. This allowed us to forego transporting goods to to our South Carolina distribution center, thereby eliminating an entire step in the delivery process.

Business-related travel We are employing better use of our internal video conferencing system, which connects our US operations with our off-shore manufacturing facilities in Honduras. In 2010, we added our European subsidiary and our Nicaraguan facility to the system.

Employee Commuting Only an estimated 5 percent of our employees worldwide commute by car, primarily at our North and South Carolina facilities. Our executive offices are based in New York City, where most employees rely on public transportation; our manufacturing plants are in Central America, where the majority of employees also rely heavily on public transportation. Though employee commuting represents a small portion of our overall footprint, we have encouraged car-pooling in those facilities where employees drive to work. We have not, however, documented energy reductions as a result of this practice.