We recently sat down with Candace Rodriguez, Senior Director of Sustainability for The Home Depot, to discuss the company's years-long commitment to eliminate hard-to-recycle materials from their packaging. The Home Depot has announced its goal to have all new private-brand fiber packaging be compostable or recycable by fiscal 2027.

The company recently eliminated Expanded Polystyrene foam and Polyvinyl Chloride film in new packaging for its private-brand products sold in the U.S., Canada and online. Both of these packaging materials are made from synthetic substances that can take more than a century to biodegrade. These efforts enable The Home Depot to lessen their environmental footprint, reduce shipping costs, and give customers a better experience with less waste.

In this interview, Rodriguez explains how The Home Depot defines fiber-based packaging, how they work with suppliers to explore and adopt alternative packaging options, the challenges of eliminating certain materials from their packaging, and the advice she would give to other companies about how to make their packaging more sustainable.

"We worked to find cushion material and other fiber-based molded pulp materials that would meet our performance standards for our various products," Rodriguez explains. "For us, we focus on where we have our greatest impacts. For The Home Depot, we have five environmental pillars: carbon emissions, water conservation, responsible chemistry, sustainable forestry, and circulatity. And from there, we look at where we can make a difference under each of those pillars."

You can check out the full video interview above.