At Home Depot, How Green Is That Chainsaw?
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: June 25, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/business/25depot.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3
ATLANTA — Home Depot sent a note a few months ago to the companies
that supply the 176,000 products it sells, inviting them to make a
pitch to have their products included in its new Eco Options marketing
campaign.
More than 60,000 products — far more than obvious candidates like
organic gardening products and high-efficiency lightbulbs — suddenly
developed environmental star power.
Plastic-handled paint brushes were touted as nature-friendly because
they were not made of wood. Wood-handled paint brushes were promoted
as better for the planet because they were not made of plastic.
An electric chainsaw? Green, because it was not gas-powered. A bug
zapper? Ditto, because it was not a poisonous spray. Manufacturers of
paint thinners, electrical screwdrivers and interior overhead lights
claimed similar bragging rights simply because their plastic or
cardboard packaging was recyclable.
“In somebody’s mind, the products they were selling us were
environmentally friendly,” said Ron Jarvis, a Home Depot senior vice
president who oversees the Eco Options program.
But not in his mind.
“Most of what you see today in the green movement is voodoo
marketing,” he added. “If they say their product makes the sky bluer
and the grass greener, that’s just not good enough.”
By the standards of Mr. Jarvis — who fertilizes his own home garden
with a liquefied worm waste product packaged in recycled soda bottles
and fills his swimming pool with salt water to avoid putting chlorine
into the environment — only 2,500 of the products made the cut.
Even at that number, some environmentalists say that Home Depot is
being too inclusive. In the process, they say, it is engaging in its
own kind of overstated marketing, posing as green even as it continues
to sell powerful pesticides and polluting lawnmowers.
Green, after all, has become the new “new and improved,” a label so
widely used that many environmental groups, while lauding the
heightened interest of consumers, now dismiss many of the efforts as
greenwash.
“Everybody is in a mad scramble to say how green they are,” said Jim
O’Donnell, manager of the Sierra Club Stock Fund, which handles $50
million in a portfolio of companies it considers environmentally
friendly. He added that he was hopeful the product greening would
become more meaningful over time.
One reason for the scramble is that there are few verifiable or
certified standards to substantiate claims. Crest has introduced a
toothpaste containing green tea extract and natural mint, sold under
the “Nature’s Expressions” label, even though it contains artificial
ingredients like most toothpastes. Raid sells a wasp and hornet killer
in a green can marked “Green Options” with “Natural Clove Scent.”
“You almost have to be a scientist with a lab to decipher the dizzying
array of claims,” said Robyn Griggs Lawrence, editor in chief for
Natural Home magazine. “It’s hard to get information on what makes a
product green.”
Few people know that better than Mr. Jarvis of Home Depot, the
nation’s second-largest retailer behind Wal-Mart.
The products he has accepted for the Eco Options promotion include
solar-powered landscape lighting, biodegradable peat pots and paints
that discharge fewer pollutants.
But he has often gone back to suppliers and independent testers for
clarification and new testing on products. Sometimes he requests
product improvements, since Home Depot ultimately wants to sell about
6,000 products under the Eco Options program. (The suppliers have an
incentive to meet his requests: sales of products in the Eco Options
program have gone up an average of about 10 percent since the program
began in April.)
Home Depot executives acknowledge that they are navigating largely
uncharted waters because the government and private-company
certifications that do exist on environmental impact tend to be
narrowly focused.
It took weeks, for instance, to choose among a multitude of paint
toxicity standards that local governments have set around the country.
(Home Depot said it chose the strictest standard, set in Southern
California.)
For now, most Eco Options products rely on independent certifications
like Energy Star, which measure energy efficiency and is run by the
Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy.
Even though Energy Star is a widely accepted barometer for how much
electricity a refrigerator or washing machine uses, it does not
measure other factors, like how much energy was used to make the
appliance in the first place or whether the manufacturer used recycled
materials and encouraged its product to be recycled at the end of its
life.
Home Depot is working with Scientific Certification Systems, a private
company based in Emeryville, Calif., that audits and certifies company
claims, to develop new broad-based standards. They will grade a
product based on its environmental record over its entire life cycle —
including the sustainability of its production process, its efficiency
and longevity and how it can be recycled when it is no longer useful.
But until some kind of standard can be worked out, Mr. Jarvis and his
team are forced to work their way through the thicket of claims.
They are currently considering a rug that is made out of corn fiber
instead of nylon, one that the manufacturer is heralding as a natural,
earth-friendly product. Corn is natural, Mr. Jarvis acknowledged, but
he said he was concerned about the buildup of phosphates in the Gulf
of Mexico coming off the Mississippi River from corn farming, as well
as the fuel it takes to run the tractors in corn fields and to
transport the corn.
“When you look at the entire life cycle, nylon could have less of an
environmental impact,” he said.
Teimeiko Fletcher, an environmental marketing manager at Home Depot,
walked into Mr. Jarvis’s office on a recent day with a thick folder of
products that manufacturers wanted to be included in the Eco Options
program.
Mr. Jarvis liked a dimmer made by Lutron that promised 5 percent
energy savings, but asked that the Environmental Protection Agency be
consulted for verification. He was impressed by a claim by E-3 that a
spark plug for lawn and garden products would lower carbon dioxide
emissions by 7 percent, but he asked Ms. Fletcher to find out if other
spark plugs on the market could do better.
One manufacturer said its asphalt roofing was environmentally friendly
because it could be placed over existing roofing, thereby limiting
overloading of landfills.
Mr. Jarvis said he was not impressed, even though Home Depot already
sells the product. “Wood shingles would be better, as long as it comes
from sustainable forestry,” he noted.
Skeptics say Home Depot is also attempting to give itself a green
patina, endorsing products that may not be all they are cracked up to
be while continuing to sell lawnmowers, toxic pesticides and
inefficient light bulbs.
Urvashi Rangan, a senior environmental health scientist at Consumer
Reports, complained of one store where Eco Options signs were placed
haphazardly around toxic bee and hornet insecticides.
“If they really wanted to promote sustainability, they would
discontinue their products with the least green attributes,” said
Garvin Jabusch, a partner at Green Alfa Advisors, which directs
investors on how to invest in a sustainable economy. “Manufacturers
would stop making them on the spot.”
Mr. Jarvis says many manufacturers have expressed a willingness to
work with Home Depot to improve their products to earn the Eco Options
label. “The manufacturers are seeing the green ship leave the port,”
he said “and they don’t want to be left on the dock.”
--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
Celibacy in healthy human beings is a form of
insanity. -- Captain Compassion
"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net
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