In a rare move, shareholders of Home Depot, one of the largest E decor platforms, has forced it to reevaluate itd plywood sourcing policies citing that some of the plywood it sells may have been sourced from an environmentally vulnerable forests which are affected by deforestation. A report by SURFACES REPORTER (SR).
Deforestation- a major concern
According to the sources, Some of Home Depot’s plywood is allegedly sourced from vulnerable forests in Ecuador’s Chocó region and the Brazilian Cerrado, and conservationists and investors have pressured the home improvement giant to clean up its supply chain.
In a meeting held recently, the shareholders voted on a proposal given by Green Century Funds, an environmentally focused investment fund that owns some 42,000 shares of Home Depot stock. The proposal has asked the company to review if and how it could increase the “scale, pace and rigor of its efforts to eliminate deforestation and the degradation of primary forests in its supply chains.”
“It’s a good day for the world’s forests, from Canada’s boreal to the tropical rainforests of South America, and for the species that depend on them,” Green Century President Leslie Samuelrich said in a statement.
Home Depot has around 2,300 locations across North America, making it the region’s largest home improvement retailer and a significant wood importer. The company doesn’t offer specific figures on how much it imports from where.
The company hasn’t committed to rigorously evaluating those imports, Green Funds pointed out, and only requires that some products in some parts of the world receive deforestation-risk certification from third-party evaluators. In addition to Ecuador’s Chocó, Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and Cerrado and Paraguay’s Gran Chaco aren’t listed on the company’s “endangered regions” list, according to the fund.
Why the campaign
According to many media outlets, pressure on Home Depot to change its wood-sourcing policies increased ahead of the annual shareholders’ meeting, thanks in part to a campaign to save the Chocó region of western Ecuador, where the company allegedly sources from old-growth forests.
The area has lost more than 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) of forest in the past 20 years, much of it from logging by international wood suppliers.