Green Year

Dude, the bandwagon is getting crowded over heh…now Home Depot is going to offer a whole line of green stuff, which apparently is flying off the shelves up north in Kanuckistan.

After squabbling over prices for decades, the nation’s big-box retail chains are ready to battle in a new arena: the environment.

Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

Dan Brown stocked organic vegetables and herbs in peat pots at a Home Depot store in Atlanta. The health benefits spur sales of organic food.

Home Depot today will introduce a label for nearly 3,000 products, like fluorescent light bulbs that conserve electricity and natural insect killers, that promote energy conservation, sustainable forestry and clean water.

The initiative — which is expected to include 6,000 products by 2009, representing 12 percent of the chain’s sales — would become the largest green labeling program in American retailing and could persuade competitors to speed up their own plans.

And it signals that Home Depot, the country’s second-largest retailer, is joining the largest, Wal-Mart, in pursuing issues of public concern like climate change that stores have left to governments and environmental groups.