Throughout the 1990s, Home Depot and other retailers sourced lumber and product materials from old-growth forests across the Pacific Northwest. Containing some of the oldest trees in the world, these forests played a critical role in the ecosystem by providing bio-diversity for the region and by cleaning the surrounding air, water, and soil.

The sourcing of lumber from these forests risked eliminating one of the region’s most prized natural resources. As the largest supplier of lumbar in the world, Home Depot’s sourcing practice had an especially large influence on the region.

Representing an array of activists and communities, Trillium Asset Management and As You Sow mobilized stakeholders and shareholders to address Home Depot’s impact on old-growth forests. In 1999, they filed a =shareholder resolution that requested that Home Depot phase out selling wood sourced from old-growth forests.

Specifically, the resolution requested that Home Depot generate a report that would contain a list of products sold at Home Depot that are derived from old growth forests, detail which old growth forests are currently affected by the Company's purchasing practices, include an action plan with a timeline to phase out all sales of old growth wood within 24 months, and include a program to educate the Company's associates, suppliers and customers to insure successful implementation of the policy.

Although the resolution did not receive a majority vote, the motion helped generate additional publicity around the issue, which was also taken up by activist groups such as the Sierra Club, the Rainforest Action Network, and Forest Stewardship Council. Soon after, Home Depot responded to the resolution and protests by adopting its Wood Purchasing Policy and ceasing cultivation from old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, which helped influence other competitors and suppliers to adopt similar policies.