Home Depot sells hammers, appliances, and garden supplies. It does not make them.
But the Company has quietly turned itself into a plastics policy enforcer — mandating that its suppliers reduce or convert 200 million pounds of plastic by 2028, with every compliance cost embedded right back into the prices the Company pays for the products on its shelves. National Legal and Policy Center thinks shareholders deserve to know what that’s actually costing them.
NLPC has filed a shareholder proposal at Home Depot — Item 6 on the 2026 Proxy Statement (Page 34) — and is now circulating its case to the Company’s investors ahead of the May 21, 2026 annual meeting. An executive summary and a full exempt solicitation report are being distributed to Home Depot investors. Shareholders may vote immediately at www.proxyvote.com.
The proposal asks the Board to commission an independent, scientifically rigorous evaluation of its plastics packaging policies. NLPC is also urging a vote against Item 7 — a competing proposal from As You Sow that would pile even more unexamined commitments onto a company that can’t demonstrate the ones it already has are working.
The science is not on the activists’ side. A landmark 2024 study in Environmental Science & Technology found that plastic produces fewer lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than alternatives in 15 of 16 product categories.
The American Chemistry Council found that replacing plastic packaging with alternative materials would generate 69 percent higher greenhouse gas emissions and require 90 percent more energy.
And the microplastics alarm? A January 2026 Guardian investigation found that the studies underpinning the health crisis narrative are probably riddled with “contamination and false positives.” The circular economy agenda Home Depot has embedded into its supplier contracts does not rest on solid science.
The recycling system it’s counting on isn’t there either. California — the state most committed to making plastics recycling work, with the most ambitious law and the most activist enforcement posture — is recycling most plastics at rates in the single digits. Polypropylene: 2 percent. Clear PET bottles — among the most recyclable plastics on the market — 16 percent. Home Depot has committed to 100 percent recyclable packaging by 2027. California just documented that the system to process it doesn’t exist.
CEO Ted Decker (pictured above) is not operating in an environment where any of this is affordable. He has told analysts the housing market is at a “40-year low as a percentage of housing stock,” Home Depot missed earnings estimates in three consecutive quarters, and adjusted earnings per share dropped 3.6 percent for fiscal 2025. Volunteering supply chain cost burdens in that environment is not prudent management.
Add to this: Home Depot is a member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition — one of three organizations that a ten-state attorneys general coalition formally warned may be violating federal antitrust law through coordinated packaging standards. The Board’s opposition statement to NLPC’s proposal says nothing about this liability.
NLPC is asking for something simple: prove these policies make sense. Read the executive summary and full report. Then vote FOR Item 6 and AGAINST Item 7 — right now at www.proxyvote.com (you will need your control number or an account number).
(Post references PX14A6G Notice of exempt solicitation)
