The Home Depot 'Paints' Itself Green

"After squabbling over prices for decades, the nation's big-box retail chains are ready to battle in a new arena: the environment.

Home Depot today will introduce a label for nearly 3,000 products, like fluorescent light bulbs that conserve electricity and natural insect killers, that promote energy conservation, sustainable forestry and clean water.

The initiative - which is expected to include 6,000 products by 2009, representing 12 percent of the chain's sales - would become the largest green labeling program in American retailing and could persuade competitors to speed up their own plans.

And it signals that Home Depot, the country's second-largest retailer, is joining the largest, Wal-Mart, in pursuing issues of public concern like climate change that stores have left to governments and environmental groups."