The Home Depot Commitment

The world's remaining forests house over 50% of the earth's biodiversity. The threat of habitat loss as a result of continued unsustainable commercial logging operations and other activities over the coming decades could be a major cause of global species extinctions, and the degradation of critically important forest ecological processes and functions. Increased rates of forest loss, particularly in biodiversity rich areas, have reached crisis proportions. Other considerations - such as the long-term impacts of forest loss on wood supply and quality are also incompatible with the survival of a healthy wood products industry.

As You Sow led a group of socially responsible investors in asking Home Depot, the world's largest retailer of old-growth lumber, to consider phasing out sales of old growth wood. A shareholder resolution initiative managed by As You Sow received the support of 11.8% of all shareholders (113 million shares) at the company's annual meeting in May 1999. We personally contacted 150 of the top institutional investors of Home Depot stock with the message that it was possible for the company to protect the world's dwindling endangered forest areas and to preserve its good name and long-term earnings at the same time. This result was more than double the 5% average support that such resolutions routinely receive at annual meetings of publicly traded companies. A coalition of environmental activists (including Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace, Forest Ethics and others) was also pressuring the company to phase out sales of old-growth wood.

Three months later Home Depot announced it would indeed phase out sales of wood products from endangered forest areas by the end of 2002. As part of a new timber purchasing policy the company also agreed to:

• Give preference to the sale of timber certified as well managed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) wherever possible.
• Find and promote ways to use wood more efficiently.
• Promote and support alternatives to wood products.
• Ensure that timber suppliers are in compliance with existing laws and regulations

We support this comprehensive approach that seeks to make up for the loss of old-growth sales by promoting alternatives to virgin wood products and to find ways to use wood more efficiently. The size and scope of this commitment by Home Depot demonstrates the potential of focused efforts by proponents of Corporate Social Responsibility to help stimulate positive changes in policies and practices at publicly held companies.

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Renewable Energy at Xcel

In 2001, shareholders filed a resolution asking Xcel Energy to adopt a policy of increasing renewable energy sources as a means to meet future demand and regulation, and to reduce the risks Xcel incurs by contracting with problematic energy providers such as Manitoba Hydro. As You Sow conducted a solicitation campaign to thousands of investors and a media campaign that garnered considerable print, radio and TV coverage. This included a full-page ad in the NY Times business section that stated " Xcel Shareholders, It's Your Vote: Environmental Destruction, Mass Unemployment, Broken Treaty / Renewable Energy, Community Renewal, Corporate Responsibility".

While hydropower can be a renewable source of energy, mega-projects such as Manitoba Hydro cause such extensive ecological and social destruction that they do not qualify as renewable under a definition applied in Minnesota and adopted in several other states. Xcel's 12-state service territory contains abundant biomass resources and the best wind energy potential in North America. "The Saudi Arabia for Wind Energy," is how a Union of Concerned Scientists report labeled the Midwest. Xcel's home state of Minnesota is rated as Class 5 wind country - the best on the continent. Increasing renewable energy sources would allow for greater market flexibility, improve shareholder value, and reduce the growing threat to Xcel's reputation as a result of its purchasing energy from Manitoba Hydro.

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