Is Home Depot’s much-advertised PR darling “Eco Options” program an example of green washing or a genuine good? The NYT attempts to find out by interviewing Ron Javis, Home Depot’s senior vice president overseeing the Eco Options program.

Jarvis enjoys highlighting the exclusive nature of the program by scoffing at products whose manufacturers lobbied for inclusion:

“In somebody’s mind, the products they were selling us were environmentally friendly,” said Ron Jarvis, a Home Depot senior vice president who oversees the Eco Options program.

But not in his mind.

“Most of what you see today in the green movement is voodoo marketing,” he added. “If they say their product makes the sky bluer and the grass greener, that’s just not good enough.”

By the standards of Mr. Jarvis — who fertilizes his own home garden with a liquefied worm waste product packaged in recycled soda bottles and fills his swimming pool with salt water to avoid putting chlorine into the environment — only 2,500 of the products made the cut.

One of the problems Jarvis faces is a lack of a definition of what “green” means. Recycled materials? Made of corn? Sustainable manufacturing? Energy saving? No one, not even the Senior Vice President in charge of Eco Options, knows for sure. —MEGHANN MARCO

At Home Depot, How Green Is That Chainsaw? [NYT]
(Photo: Maulleigh)

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