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Is Home Depot Ethical? Why Its Health Score Is -30

home depothealth scoreretail ethics
July 17, 2026

Home Depot Scores -30 on Health: What the Current Record Shows

Home Depot is a hardware store. It sells lumber, tools, and paint. A -30 on Better Health for All is not the first score you would expect.

It makes more sense when you look at what else is on the shelves.


The Full Scorecard

Current average across scored values: -10. One positive, two neutral scores, and seven negatives.


Why Health?

Home Depot is one of the largest retailers of chemical products in the United States. Pesticides, herbicides, solvents, paints, adhesives, and treated lumber are core product categories. The health score captures:

Product safety. Documented cases of selling products later subject to recall or regulatory restriction. The EPA and state regulators have flagged products available at Home Depot for health hazard concerns.

Worker exposure. Warehouse and store employees handle hazardous materials daily. OSHA records document workplace safety incidents related to chemical handling.

Community health impact. The scale of pesticide and chemical sales through Home Depot locations contributes to downstream health effects tracked by environmental health organisations.


The Environmental Scores

The -50 on Planet-Friendly Business and -40 on Zero Waste reinforce the pattern. A retailer with 2,300+ warehouse-format stores generates significant environmental impact through logistics, packaging waste, and the lifecycle of products sold.

The -40 on Kind to Animals reflects product lines that include rodenticides, insecticides, and animal control products.


What Home Depot Gets Right

The +20 on Respect for Cultures & Communities and +10 on Fair Pay reflect documented community investment programs and employee compensation that, for a retailer, sits above the sector average.

Two positive scores out of eleven. For a household name, that is below average.

View Home Depot's full score on Mashinii.

Primary sources