On a recent Memorial Day weekend, Home Depot was giving away a free compact flourescent lamp (CFL) to each customer who ventured into the store. It was a nationwide campaign that bought Home Depot a lot of environmental credibility and gave consumers of the traditional incandescent bulbs their first exposure to a “greener alternative.” Tens of millions of CFL bulbs were distributed that weekend and it was an publicity coupe for the chain whose slogan is ”you can do it and we can help.”
But if a thinking consumer sat down and actually analysed the factual consequences of Home Depot’s “greening of America” initiative, (doing the math as it were) one could only conclude that, in reality, this program was the “poisoning of America.”