The environment has become a hot topic for the public, politicians and big business. This is a good sign because without any one of these participants, moving forward in a responsible manner simply would not work.

Saturday was a special day at Home Depot Cambridge, where the home renovation giant pulled together various suppliers, city and regional health, waste and environment agencies as well as local politicians to unveil their Cambridge Stewardship trailer. The trailer, a transportation utility vehicle will serve to assist both local volunteerism groups and environmental agencies in their efforts to carry out their areas of community service more effectively.

Home Depot has become a partner in local eco-strategies such as tree planting and the buy-a-bale straw house residency being spearheaded by the U of W School of Architecture. They have inspired many of the Home Depot employees to give of their spare time, become community team members, in order to help achieve local community projects through volunteerism.

Wood Waste Solutions - A Pallet-able Idea That Works

One Home Depot partner acquires the wooden pallets used by suppliers of the company to ship products for their supply line. The pallets are picked up, sorted, shreaded, coloured with environmentally friendly dyes and turned into gardening and flower bed mulch. It will then work its way into the ground again and become organic material. This brings natural products full circle. There are also countless other applications such as: animal bedding; fuel for industrial wood burning stoves; protective tree root covering; pulp for paper products; roofing shingles; odor control on landfill sites; erosion control and playground cover. The Pallet Management Group / Wood Waste Solutions is growing in leaps and bounds, and along the way,  they keep discovering creative ways to find new uses for waste products which would, in the past, be buried in our landfill sites. 

ICI Introduces Environmentally Friendly Paints

CIL (Canadian Industries Limited) is now owned by internationally known ICI. They are now distributing through Home Depot's Eco Options Line, CIL DULUX Natural Whites, which contain no petroleum-based or other organic solvents. (Also called V.O.C.'s - Volatile Organic Compounds.)

ECO Now...Before It's Too Late

City dumps from human waste are looming like mountains outside and inside our urban landscapes and continue to be a grave concern for exisitng life -- and life in the future -- if we don't soon find some effective solutions.

The answer is, of course, education and corporate partnership so that consumer waste can be reduced, recycled and reused. Consumers must let big business know that they want change; if they don't, things will simply keep flying along at a break-neck pace which threatens the very life we've come to take very much for granted.