Boston, February 5, 2024 – The Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer, issued a new sustainable forestry report nearly two years after a related shareholder proposal from Green Century, an environmentally responsible mutual fund based in Boston. The proposal, which received 64% of the shareholder vote in May 2022, asked the company to assess how it could increase the scale, pace and rigor of its efforts to eliminate deforestation and forest degradation from its supply chains.
The report covers an in-depth assessment of the company’s wood sourcing policies and announces a set of strengthened standards that will protect high-risk regions such as the Cerrado in Brazil, the world’s most biodiverse savanna and home to 5% of the planet’s animals and plants. The report also asserts that the wood Home Depot sources from Canada is sustainable, sidestepping concerns that the company’s sourcing policies from the region contribute to degradation of the Canadian boreal forest.
“We applaud Home Depot’s new commitments that will protect more tropical ecosystems and the rich biodiversity our planet needs to thrive,” said Leslie Samuelrich, President of Green Century. “However, we believe the company’s Canadian sourcing policies fall short of the standards needed to protect the boreal forest, home to critical wildlife habitat for species such as grizzly bears and caribou.”
In the report, Home Depot announced an expansion of its approach to sustainable sourcing such that by the end of fiscal year 2026, wood products sourced to the U.S. and Canada from an additional set of high-risk regions will be required to bear third-party certification or be plantation-grown. The new policy covers a majority of Home Depot’s overall wood sourcing and includes regions such as the Cerrado, Gran Chaco, and Atlantic Forest biomes in South America.
“Home Depot’s new sustainable wood sourcing policies are a welcome step in the right direction,” said Annie Sanders, director of shareholder advocacy at Green Century. “We congratulate the company for establishing new protections in tropical ecosystems and urge additional steps to more fully protect primary forests in the Canadian boreal.”
The North American boreal forest is the largest intact ecosystem left on the planet. Disturbances from logging in the boreal forest have endangered more than half of the iconic woodland caribou herds. Unfortunately, a new study shows that logging in Canada’s boreal forest is causing severe damage, harming wildlife and compromising the forest’s ability to absorb and store carbon, which is critical for fighting climate change.