Home Depot and Arbor Day Foundation partner to reforest 2,000 acres

Home Depot is giving store teams a new way to talk about trees, outdoor projects and the company’s environmental pitch. Through its Arbor Day Foundation partnership, the retailer said it will help reforest 2,000 acres by 2028, with the first 500-plus acres aimed at restoring endangered longleaf pine habitat in Florida and Texas, rebuilding biodiversity in Brazil’s Amazon and Atlantic forests, and preserving wildlife habitat.

For associates in Garden, Outdoor Power and seasonal departments, the value is immediate: this is not just a corporate climate statement, it is something they can point to when customers ask why trees, mulch, soil and landscape planning still matter in a big-box aisle. Home Depot says 2,000 acres is equivalent to more than 800 Home Depot stores, a comparison that gives the partnership a concrete scale workers can use on the floor.

The company has been trying to connect those conversations to its broader Eco Actions messaging. Home Depot says its biggest environmental impact comes from the products it sells, and that program is meant to educate customers about sustainable product innovations and project ideas. In fiscal 2024, it said Energy Star purchases helped reduce annual electricity use by nearly 1.4 billion kilowatt hours, save nearly $176 million and cut carbon emissions by about 928,000 metric tons. The company also says it wants customers to save an additional $375 million in energy costs by the end of 2028, bringing projected savings to nearly $1 billion since 2023.

The Arbor Day Foundation gives the partnership a forestry story associates can actually use. The group says more than 85% of southern forests are on private land, making landowner partnerships central to restoration work. It says longleaf pine can live an average of 250 years, withstand high winds and resist pests, and that it has already helped plant more than 15 million longleaf pine trees in the American Southeast. The foundation also says trees provide habitat for 80% of land-based animals, a stat that makes the biodiversity angle easier to explain to shoppers who care about wildlife as much as price.

Home Depot has been folding that message into its operating playbook for a while. Its 2025 Living Our Values materials say sustainable forestry is one of its operating pillars, and its sustainability reporting says climate-related risk assessment is built into the company’s enterprise risk management process with input from merchandising, operations, supply chain, IT, government relations, human relations and legal, along with a Sustainability Council. The same materials say seasonal suppliers plant three new Christmas trees for every one harvested, underscoring that the company wants the story to run from sourcing to checkout.

The partnership also lands alongside a broader community push. Home Depot said its foundation granted nearly $90 million in 2024, part of a larger effort to tie business operations, associate knowledge and customer-facing product talk to the company’s sustainability message.