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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Financing your remodel is more difficult with the state of our economy (speaking from experience), and if you are like me you are looking for all opportunities to secure additional funding to make your remodel what you have always dreamed it would be.  

To help, The Home Depot is offering up a $5,000+ prize and more to homeowners who are remodeling, and getting green at the same time.

To win this bounty, you’ll need to shoot a short video showing how you are saving money and helping the environment by making your home more energy efficient.  According to THD, your video must focus on home energy issues such as insulation, appliances, and water usage. 

Not only is there (1) Grand Prize winner who will win that $5K (plus additional cash toward insulation services), but there is also a 2nd place ($1,500) and a 3rd place ($500) prize. 

Submissions started on September 25th, and the final day to submit is November 9th.  The Home Depot tells us that winners will be announced no later than November 24, 2008!

Read all details on a Home Depot website on YouTube:  Save Money. Save Energy. Win Big.

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As you work through your remodel, you can now drop off old compact flourescent light (CFL) bulbs to The Home Depot for recycling while you are picking up new home products.

This free service is the first such offering made so widely available by a retailer in the United States and offers customers additional options for making environmentally conscious decisions from purchase to disposal.

At each Home Depot store, homeowners can simply bring in any expired, unbroken CFL bulbs, and give them to the store associate behind the returns desk. The bulbs will then be managed responsibly by an environmental management company who will coordinate CFL packaging, transportation and recycling to maximize safety and ensure environmental compliance.

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Home Depot starts selling eco-friendlier paint in April.

ICI Paints and The Home Depot will launch an environmentally friendly paint nationwide in April 2008. The Freshaire Choice? Paint offers a paint free of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and is backed by a lifetime guarantee and GREENGUARD certification. Featuring a custom color palette of 66 beautiful colors available through an innovative tinting system.   Additionally, the packaging, samples, color cards are made in some % with recycled materials.  At $35-38 a gallon, here is what Home Depot and ICI have to say about it (from their press release today)…

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the air inside a home is, on average, two-to-five-times more polluted than the air outside. As the emphasis of environmental concern shifts from outside to inside, paint is a large contributing factor to poor indoor air quality and can emit harmful chemicals, such as VOCs, for years after application.

While many paint manufacturers have recently introduced products that claim to contain “low” or even “zero” VOCs, the GREENGUARD Environmental Institute (GEI), one of the most stringent independent test laboratories in the United States, recognizes The Freshaire Choice Paint as the industry?s first residential, tinted paint product to be GREENGUARD Indoor Air Quality Certified® and the only paint to be awarded the highest level of certification for Children & Schools.”

Furthermore, while the GEI supports The Freshaire Choice?s environmental claim to improve air quality indoors, The Freshaire Choice?s no-VOC formulation1 doesn?t compromise in product quality, either. In addition to its official third-party verification, The Freshaire Choice Paint is designed and proven to be long lasting and equally durable with regard to washing and resisting stains. Best of all, it?s backed by a lifetime warranty that will maintain its earth-friendly reputation for years after application.

The Freshaire Choice Paint custom color palette consists of 66 brilliantly selected shades across the color spectrum, all inspired by nature. The rich, premium colors are arranged into four groupings ? Waterscapes, Atmosphere, Botanical and Earth. The palette is not only deep in the natural beauty, but also goes on smooth, covers flawlessly and dries in minutes.

New Tinting System Provides Beautiful Colors without Chemical Odor or VOCs

Although many consumers are aware of warnings regarding VOCs, what some may not understand is how to accurately interpret the levels. The truth is, some paints are free of these harmful chemicals, but the average paint colorant adds up to 150 grams of VOC back into the paint once the color is mixed. With the new colorant pouch technology of The Freshaire Choice Paint, homeowners receive the perfect color and quality, with no VOCs.

The secret behind The Freshaire Choice Paint?s eco-friendly status is a new advanced colorant technology. The Freshaire Choice Paint features an exclusive, pre-measured ColorFresh? delivery system to ensure the paint is perfect in color and consistency every time. This innovative technology mixes a new no-VOC paint with a new no-VOC tinting system. Best of all, the paint does not expel any chemical odor. By eliminating the commonly associated ?fresh paint? smell, homeowners can now conquer indoor painting projects all year round without sacrificing quality of the air inside their home or the safety of their family.

Environmentally Friendly Painting Program ? Inside and Out and Top to Bottom

With packaging made from 100-percent recycled materials, this paint takes ?green? to the next level and provides a comprehensive home, family and earth-friendly product from start to finish. The packaging, color chips and paint container were developed to make the entire package the most environmentally friendly product possible. The labeling on the paint can is made from 75-percent recycled fiber content and printed in soy ink. The chips and brochures are not only made with recycled materials, but can be recycled after use. Even the paint container itself is made from 100-percent recycled material and can be recycled, making The Freshaire Choice Paint the best choice for not just your home and your family, but for our world, as well.

Smell the Difference

The Freshaire Choice Paint will be exclusively available at The Home Depot nationwide beginning April 1, 2008. The one-gallon containers will be sold at a manufacturer?s suggested retail price of $35 ? 38. The Freshaire Choice Paint product assortment consists of flat, eggshell and semi-gloss finishes, as well as drywall interior primer and ceiling paint. For more information or to request a free sample, visit www.thefreshairechoice.com or call 1-866-880-0304. For more information on GREENGUARD, visit www.greenguard.org.

1 Freshaire?s zero-VOC content is measured by the EPA?s Reference Test Method 24.

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