Chief Executive Officer
The Home Depot
2455 Paces Ferry Road,
Atlanta, GA 30339

Dear Mr. Nardelli:

I am writing to express my concern regarding the excessive amount of plastic used as a packaging material by your company, the Home Depot. As a leading retailer, the Home Depot is in a position to make a positive environmental impact, not only in the local communities where stores are located, but throughout the nation and the world.

By encouraging manufacturers that create products exclusively for the Home Depot to use recycled and post-consumer plastics instead of virgin resins, you will not only save precious non-renewable natural resources, you will aid in the development of stable and viable markets for recycled plastics.

Additionally, by using post-consumer resins, you will save your company a significant amount of money, while at the same time enhancing your environmental credentials.

As you may know, plastics have the lowest recycling rate of all basic materials. That is because there are few markets for the recycled commodity. The types of packaging materials found in your "Hampton Bay" brand fans, and "Defiant" brand locks are examples of items which can be produced from recycled resin with no decrease in consumer acceptance or product performance. Since you may not have personally purchased or installed these projects, I have attached a photocopy of actual plastic items from these products. Given the Home Depot’s extensive array of exclusive products, I have no doubt there are other opportunities to support recycling.

I hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to make a real change, one that will ultimately affect us all. Your existing supplier can probably modify their process to use recycled resins. Should they be unwilling or for some reason unable to do so, I am certain there are other manufacturers that can produce functionally identical packaging materials from recycled and post-consumer resins.

As a friend of the environment I know I can count on you to do the right thing.

Sincerely,