Home Depot urged to stop selling cypress mulch

A group pushing Home Depot to stop buying cypress mulch from Southern forests planned to hold a crab boil in front of the Atlanta-based company’s headquarters on Thursday to bring attention to the issue.

Dan Favre, the campaign organizer for the Gulf Restoration Network, drove from New Orleans for the event with 50 pounds of crab, saying that while Lowe’s and Home Depot “temporarily said no to mulch from coastal Louisiana, that’s not good enough.

“They are selling cypress mulch that comes from endangered forests that don’t have the capacity to regenerate,” Favre said. Wal-Mart, he added, no longer sells cypress mulch from Louisiana at all.

Home Depot spokesman Ron DeFeo says the company has a firm policy about not depleting natural resources and the ban on coastal Louisiana cypress mulch is not temporary. “We notified all our suppliers that we won’t accept it. And our suppliers have provided written confirmation that they’re compliant.”.

“We obviously take customer concerns about cypress mulch very seriously,” he said. “We continue to review the situation with industry, state and local foresters. We’re dedicated to buying only wood products from forests managed in a responsible way.”