Alot of talk by big companies has gone on lately about going green: NBC, P&G, Honda, etc. In general I’m incredibly excited and motivated by these efforts; after all I can only have so much impact, but a company that touches thousands if not millions of people each day can multiply good efforts beyond belief. In fact, I’m incredibly excited that my company has increased efforts to get employees to reduce consumption (print less, increase the temperature, turn off lights, etc) and has also stepped up recycling efforts, now including items like batteries and printer cartridges beyond the usual cans and bottles.

The one from my personal experience, though, that I find most ironic is Home Depot.

I’ve been to HD about 5 times in the past week, some times completing just one transaction (buying a draw handle) and some times completing multiple (returning a draw handle and buying a drawer knob). Each time, along w/ my list of products, HD’s address and phone number, the return policy and some marketing material about the 10% guarantee, my receipt contains a survey invitation printed in both English and Spanish that doubles the length of the receipt.

Take my visit earlier today where I needed to exchange five bags of 1 5/8″ screws for five bags of 1 1/2″ screws. This amounted to two transactions (apparently HD registers can’t both purchase and return at the same time…) each of which included a survey invitation.

This resulted in 4 times the amount of paper necessary to make my exchange.

When he heard my comment about this, the clerk replied, “I know! And they never turn the lights off in the electric department, imagine how much energy we’d save just by flipping off a few of those incandescent light bulbs!”

If it didn’t take 20 minutes, I’d fill out each and every one of those surveys from here out… Hopefully though Home Depot will see enough blog posts like this one to get the picture.