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Since 2001, The Home Depot and Summerhill Impact have encouraged Canadians to permanently retire their older, higher-polluting gas-powered lawn and garden equipment through the Mow Down Pollution event. During this annual event, Canadians can take advantage of free recycling services and receive significant discounts on the purchase of environmentally preferable alternatives. This reinforces The Home Depot as a leader in innovative environmental programs and allows Canadians to live in a cleaner, healthier environment.
Gas-powered lawn equipment releases about 80,000 tonnes of GHG and smog-forming emissions in Canada each year, using 151 million litres of gas. Cleaner alternatives, such as push-reel mowers and corded and cordless electric mowers, trimmers and chainsaws, require no gasoline and their operation results in zero point-of-use emissions. In 2001, Summerhill Impact (formerly Clean Air Foundation) and The Home Depot partnered to create a market transformation program to help reduce air pollution from inefficient lawn equipment.
Summerhill's experience in developing and implementing public engagement programs helped us to create one of the largest and longest running national programs of its kind. By working with manufactures to sponsor rebates and partnering with responsible automotive recyclers across Canada, we are able to deliver a mass-market consumer facing program at all The Home Depot locations. Canadians are able to retire and recycle old, working or non-working gas-powered lawn equipment to receive instant rebates on new, less polluting equipment on special event days. Mow Down Pollution not only improves air quality for Canadians, but helps to drive traffic to The Home Depot stores and increase sales of their Eco Options environmental product line.
Since the launch of Mow Down Pollution in 2001, we have retired nearly 55,000 gas-powered lawnmowers, string trimmers, hedge trimmers, leaf blowers and chainsaws. In 2011, Summerhill Impact not only met its goal but exceeded it: Canadians responded to the call to action by retiring more than 9,600 lawnmowers, string trimmers, hedge trimmers and leaf blowers in just 14 days at The Home Depot locations across Canada. This resulted in the prevention of more than 2,000 metric tonnes of point-of-use greenhouse gas and smog-forming emissions.
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WEBSITE ⇒ www.mowdownpollution.ca