NEW YORK, NY - The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute has given its Legacy Leader Award to Bella-Dura®, an NY-based maker of performance textiles.

The Legacy Leader Award celebrates the innovation stories of companies certifying products by 2009 or before. One of only six brands being honored, Bella-Dura was introduced in 2002, after three years of teaming, testing, and planning with technical and design experts.

“We are thrilled and honored to be receiving this award,” stated Irwin Gasner, president of Wearbest Sil-Tex Mills, the parent company of Bella-Dura. “When we set out to create Bella-Dura, our intention was to develop a high-performance fabric that was highly sustainable, and this award reflects the high level of our success.”

Bella-Dura is woven with a proprietary fiber that is 100% solution dyed, with more inherent attributes than any other indoor/outdoor textile in the marketplace today. Exceeding 50,000 double-rubs and 1,500 lightfast hours, the product is stain & microbial resistant, bleach cleanable, and recyclable.

As the only textile on the marketplace whose fibers (synthetic or natural) begin as a by-product of post-industrial waste and end as a 100% recyclable material, Bella-Dura was bestowed with the first-ever 2008 Earth Minded Award from ASID and a C2C Silver Certification from MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry). Each time, Bella-Dura was the first and only environmentally friendly indoor-outdoor textile to earn these awards.

www.bella-dura.com/