Is Home Depot A Socially Responsible Company?

Over the last decade or so, consumers are making new demands on corporations, asking that they produce, manufacture, and sell their products ethically. This can often seem vague and hard to pin down, leading many folks to wonder how best to define corporate ethics. One way is through corporate social responsibility (CSR). And the largest home improvement store, Home Depot, is not exempt from this scrutiny. So while you try to determine which store to shop at for your next DIY project, we have tried to best answer whether Home Depot is a socially responsible company. 

In order to understand what Corporate Social Responsibility really is, and following Transparency-One's definition, we've decided to break it into 3 crucial parts: social, environmental, and sourcing and supply chain. Social responsibility can be thought of as community partnerships as well as a commitment to human rights through all levels of production, including laborers, retailers, and consumers. Environmental responsibility is related to reducing a corporation's carbon footprint, while sourcing and supply chain is made up of 2 components: ethical sourcing of materials and labor. That includes making sure the sourcing of materials is traceable and accountable, and holding to a universal standard for labor laws, even where local laws may be less restrictive. So let's see how Home Depot stacks up.

For a company that sources so much natural material like lumber and minerals, a natural place to begin when looking at Home Depot's social responsibility is in the environmental branch. Home Depot has tackled reducing its carbon footprint in a few different ways: encouraging suppliers to reduce their environmental impact and rewarding those who do, and taking steps to reduce their own footprint. The CDP, a non-profit that tracks and grades companies based on their carbon footprint, awarded Home Depot with an A- for 2021 for its efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, while the North American average grade is a C. 

In terms of sourcing and labor ethics, Home Depot has made some excellent strides in recent years, including the prohibition of all prison labor, voluntary or otherwise as of 2021. In Home Depot's 2021 Responsible Sourcing Report, they say, "There is both a business and moral case for working to ensure that human rights are upheld across our supply chain." They, in collaboration with Lowes, also created an auditing program for their global sources to ensure factories in other countries are compliant with the company's tenets. 

Perhaps the murkiest of all the social responsibility branches is the titular social category. To examine social responsibility, we will focus on Home Depot's commitment to human rights and community care in 2 recent national stories. 

Home Depot recently came under fire for its political donations during the 2020 election. It should be noted that Home Depot does contribute to funds on both sides of the aisle, and is a major contributor to members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the New Democrat Coalition. However, after the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, corporations were called to stop donating to any campaigns that tried to overthrow the free and fair election of Joe Biden. Home Depot vowed to stop its campaign donations, but as reported by Accountable.US., it is now the 5th largest donor to campaign objectors. 

In 2021, Georgia, where Home Depot is headquartered, passed a voter suppression law that strips away voting accessibility, and will likely disproportionately impact black and Hispanic voters. Home Depot did not speak out against this bill, and only afterward noted that they were aligned with those speaking out against the law, but in an editor's note, The Washington Post reported that "after publication of this story, a representative from Home Depot clarified that being aligned with the Chamber doesn't mean they're opposed to the proposed voting restrictions." No matter which side you support, Home Depot failed to commit to social responsibility with transparency.