Vote FOR Item 6 and AGAINST Item 7 at The Home Depot’s May 21, 2026 Annual Meeting — You May Vote Now
National Legal and Policy Center urges shareholders of The Home Depot, Inc. to vote FOR Item 6 on the 2026 Proxy Statement — a proposal asking the Board to commission and publish an independent, scientifically rigorous evaluation of the Company’s plastics packaging policies. NLPC’s exempt solicitation report is available now.
Download the Full ReportShareholders are also urged to vote AGAINST Item 7, a competing proposal by As You Sow that would push the Company to deepen the same unjustified commitments this report challenges.
Home Depot has committed, by the end of 2028, to require its suppliers to reduce or convert 200 million pounds of plastic in products and packaging to recycled or alternative materials.¹
Unlike a consumer packaged goods company managing its own packaging, Home Depot is a retailer — which means this mandate flows downstream to thousands of suppliers, embedding the cost of recycled content premiums, material redesigns, and supply chain transitions directly into the prices those suppliers charge the Company. Every dollar of added supplier cost flows back toward Home Depot’s shelf prices and margins. The Company has never disclosed the total cost of this arrangement to shareholders.
The peer-reviewed science does not support the premise. A 2024 meta-analysis in Environmental Science & Technology found that in 15 of 16 product categories, plastic produces fewer lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than its alternatives.²
The American Chemistry Council found that replacing plastic packaging with alternative materials would increase total weight 4.5 times, generate 69 percent higher greenhouse gas emissions, and require 90 percent more energy.³
And the microplastics “health crisis” driving activist pressure has itself been thrown into doubt: a January 2026 Guardian investigation found that high-profile studies claiming to detect microplastics throughout the human body are probably the result of “contamination and false positives,” with one high-profile paper called “a joke” by independent scientists.⁴
The recycling infrastructure that would make these commitments meaningful does not exist. California — the most recycling-committed state in the country, with the most activist regulatory environment and the most ambitious plastics law — is recycling most plastics at rates in the single digits. Polypropylene: 2 percent. Colored HDPE bottles: 5 percent. Clear PET: 16 percent. No plastic category exceeded 23 percent.⁵
Home Depot has committed to 100 percent recyclable packaging by 2027. The infrastructure to deliver that outcome does not exist.
Meanwhile, CEO Ted Decker has cited a housing market at a “40-year low as a percentage of housing stock” and missed Wall Street earnings estimates in three consecutive quarters of fiscal 2025, with operating income down 3.0 percent and adjusted EPS down 3.6 percent for the year.⁶ ⁷ Self-imposed plastics costs are not what a company in that position should be volunteering.
There is also a legal dimension. Home Depot is a member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition — one of three organizations that a multi-state coalition of ten attorneys general formally warned in 2025 and 2026 may be violating federal antitrust law through coordinated packaging standards.⁸ The Board’s opposition to NLPC’s proposal does not mention this exposure.
NLPC’s proposal asks for one thing: an honest, independent, quantifiable analysis of whether these policies serve shareholders. It is the kind of analysis the Board should have conducted before making the commitments it is now asking its suppliers and shareholders to live with. It is the analysis shareholders deserve before the Company deepens those commitments further.
Vote FOR Item 6. Vote AGAINST Item 7. You may vote now at www.proxyvote.com (you will need your control number or an account number).
Download the Full ReportENDNOTES
- The Home Depot, Inc., “Reducing Plastics, Packaging and PFAS: New Goals from The Home Depot,” (accessed April 15, 2026). See https://ecoactions.homedepot.com/blog/product-goals-packaging/
- Fangyue Meng, Miguel Brandao, and Julian M. Cullen, “Replacing Plastics with Alternatives Is Worse for Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Most Cases,” Environmental Science & Technology 58(6), January 30, 2024, pp. 2716-2724. See https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c05191
- American Chemistry Council, “Life Cycle Impacts of Plastic Packaging Compared to Substitutes in the United States and Canada,” April 18, 2018. See https://www.americanchemistry.com/better-policy-regulation/plastics/resources/life-cycle-impacts-of-plastic-packaging-compared-to-substitutes-in-the-united-states-and-canada
- Damian Carrington, “‘A Bombshell’: Doubt Cast on Discovery of Microplastics Throughout Human Body,” The Guardian, January 13, 2026. See https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/microplastics-human-body-doubt
- Antoinette Smith, “California Posts Initial Recycling Rates,” Resource Recycling, January 9, 2026. See https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2026/01/09/california-posts-initial-recycling-rates/
- “Home Depot CEO Sounds Alarm on Troubling Customer Trend in Stores,” TheStreet, November 24, 2025. See https://www.thestreet.com/investing/home-depot-ceo-sounds-alarm-on-troubling-customer-trend-in-stores
- The Home Depot, Inc., “The Home Depot Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2025 Results,” February 24, 2026. See https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-home-depot-announces-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-2025-results-increases-quarterly-dividend-by-1-3-provides-fiscal-2026-guidance-302695184.html
- “Attorney General James Uthmeier Leads Multi-State Coalition Putting Corporations on Notice Over Involvement with Anticompetitive Environmental Groups,” Office of the Florida Attorney General, February 10, 2026. See https://www.myfloridalegal.com/newsrelease/attorney-general-james-uthmeier-leads-multi-state-coalition-putting-corporations-notice
(Post references PX14A6G Notice of exempt solicitation)
