Home Depot Target of Forest Protests

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

Discuss Forest Conservation at http://forests.org/web/

10/12/98

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

The Rainforest Action Network has identified Home Depot, the $24

billion a year company, as "the biggest old-growth retailer in the

world." Their campaign goal is to have Home Depot stop selling

products made from old-growth forests. To get involved in the

campaign, which is occurring throughout the U.S., contact Rainforest

Action Network at < rainforest@ran.org >. Consumer campaigns such as

this hold great promise to make unsustainably harvested, old-growth

timber an unacceptable commodity. Go RAN go!

g.b.

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Title: Next Stop, Home Depot

With a record of converting the corporate, the Rainforest

Action Network eyes its biggest quarry

Source: Time Magazine, Science section

Date: OCTOBER 19, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 16

Byline: MARGOT HORNBLOWER

Most American consumers know better than to buy ivory, or ashtrays

made from gorilla paws, or tuna caught in nets that are not "dolphin

free." But when they stop by Kinko's for stationery or Home Depot for

plywood, will they ask themselves, "Is this old-growth free?"

This week, in 70 cities from Anchorage, Alaska, to Athens, Ga.,

environmentalists plan to stage a "Day of Action" by picketing Home

Depot, the mammoth building-supply chain (sales last year: $24

billion). Customers will be offered "rain forest tours" through the

store, spotlighting products made with trees from pristine, old-growth

forests around the world: dowels and tool handles of ramin wood from

Southeast Asia, doors of Amazon mahogany, cedar shingles and Douglas

fir lumber from the temperate rain forests of North America, lauan

plywood from the Philippines and Indonesia.

The protests are the opening salvo in what promises to be a hardball

campaign to force the Atlanta-based chain to stop selling products

made from old-growth wood. The environmentalists threaten to follow up

with newspaper ads, frequent pickets and civil disobedience at

selected stores around the U.S.--unless the company agrees. "Home

Depot is the biggest old-growth retailer in the world," says Randall

Hayes, president of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), a leader of

the campaign. "Stopping them from selling old growth is the most

important thing we can do to save these ancient cathedral forests and

these 2,000-year-old trees." Only 22% of the world's old-growth

forests remain intact, mostly in Brazil, Canada and Russia.

Persuading Home Depot would provide critical mass for a campaign that

has been building momentum for more than a year. A score of major U.S.

companies have agreed to limit or halt their use of old-growth

products under pressure from the San Francisco-based RAN, the

Washington-based American Lands Alliance and other environmental

groups. Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Electric agreed last February

to use only tree-free products by 2002. Kimberly-Clark scaled back its

use of rain forest-wood fiber after the organization published ads

depicting ancient forests over the headline OLDEST LIVING THINGS ON

EARTH OR TOMORROW'S TOILET PAPER? 3M signed on after ran set up an 800

number for consumers to complain. Nike, Levi Strauss and Andersen

Corp. (the largest U.S. window manufacturer) agreed without

hesitation, and Kinko's is even marketing its eco-friendliness with a

line of tree-free paper made from bananas.

In another recent victory, an environmental coalition forced MacMillan

Bloedel, Canada's largest lumber company, to stop clear-cutting and to

stay out of pristine coastal rain forests. The tactic that worked?

Getting MacBloe's big customers, such as Pacific Bell (whose phone

books were made partly with old-growth wood), to ratchet up the

pressure.

Home Depot is the biggest target yet for RAN, which has a staff of 25

and a budget of $2 million. But Suzanne Apple, Home Depot's community-

affairs director, says the activists are expecting too much, too fast.

"We are committed to the environment," she says. "We have been

encouraging our vendors to tell us the source of their lumber. But we

have 5,000 suppliers and over 50,000 products. It doesn't happen

overnight." Surely not. But if it happens at all, asserts the

combative Hayes, it will be because Home Depot and other companies get

"smacked on the head with a 2-by-4." END

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