The latest on Home Depot’s Eco Options green products and Ron Jarvis
What is orange, green, and good for a residential home remodel or improvement project? GetWithGreen thinks one answer is the ever growing inventory of Eco Option products located around the corner at your local Home Depot.
This past week Ron Jarvis senior vice president of environmental innovation with The Home Depot and GetWithGreen.com, sat down to talk about the Eco Options program, and retail trends in green home product market.
Ron’s home improvement career spans 23 years, starting early on with Lowe’s, followed by 13 years at America’s largest home improvement retailer, The Home Depot. For the last eight years Ron has been tracking energy products for the retail giant, and now leads the company’s Eco Options program, among other environmental initiatives, reduced energy consumption by stores, reduced waste and increased recycles as well as increased sustainability into all business functions.
Eco Options is Home Depot’s product labeling program that allows customers to easily identify products that have less of an impact on the environment. The 3,000+ products are located throughout the orange shelves of the retailer. Early on, the Company decided to place green home products next to their lesser eco-friendly counterparts, rather than go for a “green aisle” approach. The Depot believed that consumers should be able to compare products, and also wanted to make it easy for homeowners to find green home products.
Today these products range from indoor construction materials such as insulation, moldings and green paints, to outdoor organic fertilizers. Ron tells us that adoption of green home products is accelerating as television, advertising and other media continue to keep ‘green’ red hot in front of homeowners. Ron estimates growth to be around 10% over the next 12 months even in a negative growth economy and like a presidential candidate knocking on rural doors, Ron often walks the aisles of THD sharing his green home product knowledge. (He claims that he has never met a customer that he couldn’t convert to CFLs J.)
So what are homeowners buying when it comes to green home products at Home Depot? Ron says we are snatching up ENERGY STAR appliances, Freshaire paint, CFLs, ceiling fans and programmable thermostats. In fact the Freshaire line of paint was one of their most successful launches ever selling more than we had anticipated across all markets. This zero-voc paint in eco-friendly packaging is being used from baby’s room volume to hospital volumes because it does not carry the toxic fumes of other paints.
But are the Eco Options products really green, or this just ‘green washing’? “That is the hardest part of our job,” Ron says. He employs a small team that vets all potential green home products. They check certifications, documentation, look at peer reviews, and always err on the conservative side to protect the Eco Options brand reputation.
And how do our favorite green home products get in line to be tested? Like a job applicant researching a potential employer, we are told manufacturers who want shelf space for their green home products typically pick a local market of 10-15 stores, study the stores in that market for how their product might sell, noting competitive prices, shelf location, and more. Once the research is complete, these manufacturers are set for a discussion with Ron’s team. “Manufacturer’s have got to do the in-store detail,” Ron says. The Eco Options team helps smaller companies with innovative green home products with distribution, so it’s not just the big boys that you see on the shelf.
During our conversation, I had one bone to pick with Ron, and it was the fact that the Eco Options products remain almost invisible on The Home Depot website! GetWithGreen.com brought this up last year as we generated our list of top eco-friendly home products and retailers. As of right now, the only way to find the Eco Options product online is by following a microscopic link at the very bottom of The Home Depot home page!!
Ron acknowledged our frustration in finding green home products in their online store. This being said, he wouldn’t tell me when this would change, but did say a plan was on the table to start labeling Eco Options products in all product searches on the site – thus placing the eco-friendlier options next to the lesser friendly. For now, one could argue the Company has taken a ‘green aisle’ approach online, when they voted against it for their in-store strategy – puzzling. (If you would like Home Depot to make Eco-Options green home products more visible, then click this link and tell them so!)
Upcoming products to soon hit the Depot shelves include a wider selection of high-efficiency toilets (HETS), faucets, window shades, organics and innovative building materials. Ron believes that, consistent education to the homeowners around these products and others will dispel outdated thinking that green eco-friendly home products have to cost 3x as much, and don’t work as well. GetWithGreen agrees, as this was and remains our founding mission.
By making green home product options as visible as possible, then homeowners can make easy and better decisions for our environment. “Our impact can be felt here on earth, and everything we can do, we should.” Ron says.
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Hello!
I tried writing to the address info@getwithgreen.com to advise you that you should look more closely at the growing campaign to make Home Depot accountable to their green image and signed environmental agreements.
Home Depot has been approached by the most important Socially Responsible Investment fund in the country asking them to take a stand and stop the damming of free and wild rivers in the Chilean Patagonia. Home Depot is directly connected to this controversy.
I recommend looking at the International Rivers website (www.internationalrivers.org/patagonia) and seeing the letter at the trilliuminvest.com and consider doing another interview with Ron Jarvis, if not simply asking your customers to do what thousands of people have already done–stop shopping at Home Depot!
Sincerely getting with green,
Gary
Gary,
At The Home Depot we stive for excellent customer service and we vow to research and promote products that have less of an impact on the environment. We are not perfect at either of these but spend a lot of our resources for continual improvement. Dictating to foreign countries on which energy resource they will choose to supply their citizens is not our expertise. To date no one from Chile has called and asked us our opinion.
Our wood purchases from Chile (less than 5% of our wood supply) are from plantations 1000 miles from the proposed Pantagonia Dam project.
If the dams were being created to benefit Home Depot or to supply products to the Home Depot we would quickly join the dialogue but the proposed Dams are in no way related to the harvest or supply of products to the Home Depot (we do acknowledge that there is minor joint ownership in the wood companies and proposed dam construction companies). It is up to the Chilean Government and citizens to decide what source they use for power in the future.
I understand that as the California campaign manager you must create visibilty for your cause and I hope you find a line of communication to the Chilean Energy and Environmental Departments.
After reading your request I wanted to save David the trouble of a second interview.
Thats smart whats the price on it
very few seem to be aware that universal colorant is the single biggest source o voc’s. only the ready mixed colors are voc free.
a dark color could very well contain over 500 voc parts per gallon. ( “clean air” paint needs to be under 50 parts per gallon.)
ben moore is the only paint company in the world with a voc free waterborne colorant system, hence they are the only company that can deliver a 0 voc paint in any color.
Mike,
Thanks for your comments, you are correct in the increase of VOC’s in darker colors for most paints. We are very pleased that Freshaire does not contain any VOC’s even at the darkest colors. We offer “0″ VOC’s in all colors.
Ron Jarvis
Ron Jarvis – Environmental Innovation for Home Depot
Dear Mr. Ron Jarvis,
Congratulations on your accomplishments in the reduction of energy expenses at the store level and also for your continued commitment towards maximizing the efficiency and reducing the impact of our carbon footprint worldwide.
As you aim towards the goal of 20kWh per square foot in the year 2015, I’ve been thinking of our company direction and aim to “kick ass”.
It seems there is a vast untapped market awaiting us in solar and wind energy.
I’ve been wondering why more emphasis on solar and wind energy do-it- yourself products, even in smaller experimental form, are not yet available at the Home Depot? In contribution to your energy goal, I wonder if on a larger scale, the space above our rooftops could be transformed into showcased solar panel and wind energy fields that connect to the grid while also contributing to your goal. Is there anyone we can partner with to accomplish such a goal?
I see bays with small wind turbines and solar panels, on an affordable scale for rv’s and boats. We could also provide installation services for large scale home and business applications, all sold from POP display panels (a minimal investment).
The process would quickly establish our leadership as a trusted source in this field, while also demystifying the applications and current reality of this technology for the average consumer.
The national publicity alone would be the payoff, and curiosity would drive more customers through our doors. If there is any way I can help to contribute to your goals, or be involved, I remain available.
Best regards,
Allan Zuckerman
Employee # 113359384- recent hire on the MET Team
6214 Stillwater Court
University Park, Florida 34201
941-400-5504
I love Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.