Good Lifestyle

The home gardening and renovation season is officially about us. If cultivating your own vegetables, building an outdoor home or renovating your kitchen is on your summer task list, there is a good chance that you spend a lot of time traveling the aisles at Home Depot. The sharp increase in pedestrian traffic will be a warm welcome for the domiciliary renovation chain, of which Comparable sales were down For six consecutive quarters. However, the recent controversy of Home Depot prohibited products can encourage buyers to abandon the retailer for good.

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On June 27, the Washington Department of Ecology (WDE) has issued a fine of $ 1.6 million at Home Depot for having sold products prohibited from Hydrofluorocarbone (HFC) despite the vast attempt by the environmental regulation agency to put the retailer in compliance.

The massive penalty was two years in preparation, because Home Depot continued to sell these prohibited HFC products, which, according to WDE, are "powerful" with the protective ozone layer of the earth.

"HFC are chemicals made up of Hydrogen, fluorine and carbon . They are commonly used in air conditioning and refrigeration, in the production of insulating foams and propellants. These greenhouse gases are a short -lived "super polluting" and can be thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide, "said the agency on its website.

Since 2019, the Washington Legislative Assembly has adopted laws to gradually eliminate the use of HFC products. As part of this initiative, the WDE has teamed up with companies to help them respect ethics in the law.

In July 2021, it became illegal to sell R-134A cartridges in retail stores. According to WDE, R-134A is an HFC refrigerant present in CO AC systems, with "global warming potential 1,430 times that of carbon dioxide". In other words, it has the potential to do a lot of damage to our environment.

"The restriction of HFC products and equipment is essential to reach the statutory limits of greenhouse gas emissions and, ultimately, go to Net Zero by 2050," said Joel Creswell , which manages the program to reduce climate pollution of ecology, in the press release. "HFC seals safely inside air conditioning systems can be recovered, recycled and reused, but when they disclose, they become a major contributor to climate change."

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With the HFC regulations of Washington in place, companies have informed companies so to comply with new laws, which came into force in November 2021. Although most companies voluntarily take measures, the WDE said that Home Depot did not do it. Instead, the domiciliary renovation retailer kept the R-134A canistères easily available for store and online customers.

The WDE said that the agency had organized technical assistance meetings with Home Depot compliance teams between 2021 and 2023 to remove HFC products from the retailer website. "[The WDE] has been assured that the identified products would not be available for purchase in Washington and that no new prohibited product would be added to the website," said the press release.

However, a routine compliance check in July 2023 showed that Home Depot still sold R-134A canister. It was revealed that 1,058 prohibited products units were bought in Washington between April 2022 and September 2023.

Home Depot is sentenced to a fine of $ 1,500 per violation for a total of $ 1.6 million. However, the WDE has reduced the amount, which was initially set at $ 10,000 per violation. Home Depot has 30 days to call on the penalty of HFC products to the board of directors of Washington Pollution Control. AE0FCC31AE342FD3A1346EBB1F342FCB