The Home Depot - Environmental Record

Environmental Record

The Home Depot has stated on their website that they have a commitment "to the environment and pledge to continue to be an industry leader in looking for products and services that are respectful of our world." The Home Depot introduced a label on nearly 3,000 products in 2007. The label promotes energy conservation, sustainable forestry and clean water. Home Depot executives said that as the world's-largest buyer of construction material, their company had the power to persuade thousands of suppliers, homebuilders and consumers to follow its lead on environment sustainability. "Who in the world has a chance to have a bigger impact on this sector than Home Depot?" said Ron Jarvis, who is the vice president for environmental innovation at Home Depot. This program is following The Home Depot's promise in late 1990s to eliminate the number of sales of lumber from endangered forests in countries including Chile and Indonesia. Home Depot has since worked with environmental groups to create a variety of green programs. For example, Home Depot planted thousands of trees at its headquarters in Atlanta to offset carbon emissions. In 2007, The Home Depot Foundation (the company's charitable foundation) committed to investing $100 million over the next decade to build over 100,000 green affordable homes and plant three million trees.

Additionally, The Home Depot promotes compact fluorescent light bulbs in their stores. As part of this effort, the company has created the largest recycling program in the United States for the bulbs.

Barack Obama visited a Home Depot store in Arlington County, Virginia on December 15, 2009 to discuss how businesses and home owners can both benefit financially from energy efficiency home renovation projects. Obama supports home retrofitting projects that, he believes, will create jobs for construction workers many of whom were out of work due to down turn in the housing market, and will also decrease energy consumption.