VICTORY
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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Home
Depot Commits to Phasing Out Old Growth Wood
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Forest
Networking a Project of forests.org
http://forests.org/ -- Forest
Conservation Archives
http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest
Conservation
8/26/99
OVERVIEW
& COMMENTARY by EE
Home
Depot, the U.S. giant home do-it-yourself chain, has announced it
will be
phasing out old growth wood products - or "wood from
endangered
areas," as they termed it. This
represents a major move
toward
the market realization that selling old growth wood is
unacceptable
and must be stopped. This is a huge
victory. It
validates
Rainforest Action Network's strategy of targeting corporate
rainforest
timber consumers for their complicity in the forest crisis.
g.b.
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TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Home Depot commits to phasing out old
growth wood
Source: Rainforest Action Network
221 Pine Stret #500
San Francisco, CA 94014
Telephone: 415/398-4404; fax:
415/398-2732 Website: http://www.ran.org
Press contact -
Mark Westlund: ranmedia@ran.org
Michael Brune: mbrune@ran.org
Status: Distribute freely with credit given to
source
Date: August 26, 1999
HOME
DEPOT ANNOUNCES COMMITMENT
TO STOP
SELLING OLD GROWTH WOOD
ANNOUNCEMENT
VALIDATES TWO-YEAR
GRASSROOTS
ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGN
"With
Home Depot taking the lead in phasing out of old growth wood
products,
we expect other do-it-yourself retailers will follow suit.
Home
Depot's timeline still needs to be fleshed out, and we are eager
to work
with them on this, but when the sun sets this evening it will
have
been a great day for the forests!"
-
Michael Brune, Old Growth Campaign Director
After
suffering the brunt of a two-year grassroots campaign urging
Home
Depot to stop selling old growth wood products, the retail leader
announced
today in Atlanta that the company would end sales of wood
from
endangered areas by the end of 2002.
Home Depot is currently the
world's
largest retailer of old growth wood products.
"With
today's announcement, Home Depot has taken a leadership role in
the
U.S. do-it-yourself industry. By
phasing out of old growth wood
products
- or 'wood from endangered areas,' as Home Depot prefers to
say -
the company has joined the growing ranks of leading companies
around
the world who agree that selling old growth wood is
unacceptable
and must be stopped."
For the
past two years, forest protection leader Rainforest Action
Network
(RAN) has led an international campaign urging Home Depot to
stop
selling old growth wood. RAN has staged
high-profile
demonstrations
at company headquarters, including hanging a giant
banner
there last October with the words: "Home Depot, Stop Selling
Old
Growth Wood." RAN has also worked
with major institutional
shareholders,
fought Home Depot expansion plans at local city council
meetings,
coordinated a hard-hitting national ad campaign, and
organized
demonstrations at several hundred Home Depot across the U.S.
and
Canada, as well as in Chile.
"We
need to say thank you to all of the groups and individuals who
have
worked on this campaign," said RAN's Old Growth Campaign Director
Michael
Brune. "I don't think a single
week has gone by in the past
two
years that RAN or one of its partners weren't out in the streets
protesting
Home Depot's egregious wood sales."
Groups include Forest
Action
Network, Rainforest Relief, Student Environmental Action
Coalition,
Free the Planet, Sierra Student Coalition, Action Resource
Center,
American Lands Alliance, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Natural
Resources
Defense Council, Earth Culture, and many others.
Old
growth forests are forests that have never been logged
commercially,
and are the most endangered forest areas on the planet.
The
giant trees in some old growth forests are over 2,000 years old.
The
Amazon rainforest is tens of thousands of years old, large
portions
of which have never been touched by commercial logging.
Around
the world less than twenty percent of these original forests
survive,
and less than four percent in the United States.
The
wide array of old growth products Home Depot currently carries
includes
lumber from the ancient temperate rainforests of British
Columbia,
old growth lauan and ramin from Southeast Asia, and bigleaf
mahogany
from the Amazon. Although the company has promised to sell a
small
line of products that carry environmental certification, that
volume
is surpassed many times over by the wood it sells from the
planet's
most endangered forest regions.
Home
Depot's adopting a new wood products purchasing policy is the
latest
of Rainforest Action Network's recent campaign successes. In
1998,
RAN ended its boycott of Mitsubishi Motors America and
Mitsubishi
Electric America when the two companies adopted
revolutionary
environmental policies. RAN also worked
to get
MacMillan
Bloedel, the largest lumber company in Canada to stop clear-
cutting
in old growth forests.
In
December 1998, 27 U.S. corporations - including IBM, Dell, Kinko's,
Nike,
3M, Levi-Strauss, Mitsubishi Motors America, Mitsubishi Electric
America,
and others - announced their commitment to stop selling or
using
old growth wood. Europe's largest home
improvement center, B&Q,
has
nearly completed removing old growth wood from its shelves.
For a
complete timeline of the Home Depot campaign, visit RAN's
website
at
www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/old_growth/homedepot/timeline.html,
or call
for a
hard copy. Home Depot spokesman Jerry
Shields is available at
770/384-2741.
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