Boston, May 26, 2026 – Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer, sells many products that adversely impact the environment, from pesticides containing glyphosate to pots and pans treated with PFAS (aka “forever chemicals” because they resist breaking down in the environment). At the company’s annual meeting, Home Depot shareholders asked for a full accounting of those impacts. A shareholder proposal co-filed by Green Century Capital Management (“Green Century”) and led by Domini Impact Investments was supported by 14.3% of voting shareholders, representing $33 billion of company ownership.
“Home Depot sells products with ingredients that are suspected of harming the environment and human health,” said Leslie Samuelrich, president of Green Century. “Every one of those products represents a financial risk. Home Depot should do more to track and disclose to its shareholders how it impacts nature.”
Home Depot relies on nature for the products it sells
Home Depot relies on natural resources to provide some of its most important product lines, such as timber and live plants. Green Century’s shareholder proposal asked the company to account for these nature dependencies as well as the company’s impacts on the environment.
For example, the Canadian boreal forests—the source of approximately 17% of Home Depot’s timber—has experienced significant degradation due to the combined pressures of climate change and decades of industrial logging. Green Century’s proposal asked the company to assess and disclose the ways in which the company relies on the natural world for its products and operations.
“Home Depot helps their customers keep their homes in good repair,” said Andrew Shalit, shareholder advocate at Green Century. “The company should extend the same care to our shared home, the Earth we all rely on.”
Increased awareness of the need to track nature impacts
Companies and financial regulators around the world are increasingly aware of the ways in which our economy relies on the environment and well-functioning natural systems. In 2024, a group of central banks from around the world published a framework for assessing nature-related risks to the global economy. More than 700 organizations have committed to using the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosure’s guidelines to provide a comprehensive accounting of how they both depend on and impact nature. The shareholder proposal filed by Green Century asked Home Depot to publish a similar disclosure.
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