Home Depot's Wood Sales Protested other Companies Praised
http://forests.org/-- Forest Conservation Archives
12/9/98
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Title: Home Depot's Wood Sales Protested other Companies Praised
Source: Rainforest Action Network
Status: Contact source to reprint
Date: 12/9/98
Byline: Darren G. Brown
Old-growth products draw coalition's ire, but 27 other companies praised
TIMES STAFF WRITER
Environmentalists said thank you Tuesday to 27 companies and shook a
finger at Home Depot Inc. like a frustrated mom with a full-page
advertisement in the New York Times.
The advertisement recognizes the companies -- which include the 3M Co.,
Nike Inc. and Hallmark Cards Inc. - for agreeing to purge their
production lines, distribution channels, shelves and offices of old-
growth wood and reduce the amount of paper, pulp and wood products they
use.
If the companies slip, they will be pruned from the list.
For the past year Coastal Rainforest Coalition, which includes the
Natural Resource Defense Council, Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace
and other environmental groups, has been putting public pressure on a
number of companies, including Home Depot, not to use wood products made
from old-growth forests.
Environmentalists with Rainforest Action Network, based in San
Francisco, said Home Depot's 700 stores make it "the largest old-growth
retailer in the world." Starting a year ago, they asked consumers to
boycott the store.
No one knows how much old-growth wood Home Depot sells. A Home Depot
spokeswoman said tracking the origins of wood products would be too
difficult because the company has 5,000 distributors and sells more than
50,000products.
Some consumers say they would support the boycott. "If I knew they were
selling rainforest wood, I wouldn't buy it," said Chao Yao, a 32-year-
old construction worker from Richmond who was shopping at Home Depot in
El Cerrito on Sunday.
A Home Depot spokeswoman said selling old-growth wood is an unfortunate
byproduct of delivering products that customers demand.
"We are as concerned about it as environmentalist groups are," said Amy
Friend, a spokeswoman for Home Depot. She said that although the company
tries to avoid buying old-growth wood, it needs to provide what
customers want.
But Kym Miller, an El Cerrito resident, said she doesn't want to buy
old-growth wood.
"I was just thinking about that," she said. "I wouldn't want to see that
happening." Instead, she said, she would shop at independent stores or
other chain hardware stores.
"I think our customers recognize we are responsible," said Friend,
adding that the company could not reliably label old-growth wood
products.
But even if Home Depot did label which wood products were old-growth, it
would not matter to Miller, 28.
"That kind of defeats the purpose," she said. "If they were concerned
about losing sales they wouldn't carry it."
Michael Marx, executive director of the Coastal Rainforest Coalition,
urged consumers to demand that companies not buy old-growth wood
products.
"That's a huge and powerful message to investors and venture
capitalists" to change their buying practices, Marx said in a telephone
press conference Tuesday. Rainforest Action Network defines old-growth
forests as intact forests that have not been significantly degraded by
people.
"We don't feel we need to get paper from old-growth forests," Larry
Rojero, Kinko's environmental manager, said Tuesday during the news
conference.
Environmentalists said the companies that made a commitment to eliminate
the use of old-growth wood will conduct audits of companies from which
they buy wood products. Those audits, the coalition said, will be
conducted by the company's management or an outside source.
Environmentalists hope to do spot checks of companies as well.
The advertisement today is the latest in a line of protests that had
their first major success when Mitsubishi Electric promised to stop
using and buying old-growth wood products last February. In October,
Rainforest Action staged protests at Home Depot stores in 70 cities
throughout the United States. Environmentalists also took shoppers on
"tours" of Home Depot stores, pointing out products likely to have been
cut from old-growth trees.
Woods that are most likely to be old-growth, said Mark Westlund of
Rainforest Action, include North American woods such as clear-heart
redwood and greenheart, luan wood from Asia and ramin wood from
Indonesia.
Though it is not illegal to cut old-growth wood, environmentalists said
it is a question of morality, not solely economics.
"Ninety percent of all medicinal products comes from rainforests,"
Westlund said.
Environmentalists also hope to educate the public about identifying old-
growth woods and their alternatives such ascomposite and recycled woods.
But ultimately, Westlund said, the heart of the matter lies in changing
the purchasing behavior of companies that buy old-growth wood.
Although he is concerned about old-growth wood, Chao, the construction
worker, said he shopped at Home Depot on Sunday because it was
convenient. "Normally I don't shop here," he said as he loaded his car.
"But it's close to home."