Office Depot Sees Interest in Green Products Growing Despite Softening Economy; 69 Percent of Small Businesses Say They Practice Green Behaviors

DELRAY BEACH, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Office Depot (NYSE:ODP), a leading global provider of office products and services, today announced that statistics continue to support the claim that “green” is important for today’s business professionals and consumers. According to Office Depot, sales of environmentally preferable products represented in The Green Book, the Company’s catalog of green products, increased by more than 10 percent in the contract channel in 2007. This can be attributed in part to a growing interest in green behaviors by small businesses, according to a survey released by Office Depot. The survey found:

• Sixty-nine percent of small business professionals participate in one or more of the following activities: recycle paper, bottles, ink cartridges and/or technology; purchase Energy Star rated technology, recycled paper, remanufactured ink and toner cartridges, refillable products and Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs; and print on both sides of the paper.
• Eighty-five percent of respondents claim they are doing so for one of two reasons: to protect the environment, or to save money.

According to Office Depot, sales of environmentally preferable products represented in the 2007 Green Book, increased by more than 10 percent in the contract channel in the United States. Office Depot said that sales in The Green Book climbed from $660 million in 2006 to $725 million in 2007. The statistics were reported recently in the Company’s 2008 Corporate Citizenship Report.

“Office Depot launched the Green Book in 2003, five years before our primary competitors followed our lead,” said Steve Schmidt, Executive Vice President of the Business Solutions Division for Office Depot. “What these Green Book sales numbers tell us is that our customers appreciate Office Depot’s strategy of providing a wide assortment of green products, and promoting them within innovative sales vehicles.”

For the contract channel, Office Depot attributes the growth of green sales in the channel to the trend towards going green among large government and private sector accounts. The Company also claims some credit for this trend due to its comprehensive effort (featured in The Green Book) to educate customers on what it means to go green, and how to do so at the office.

“Throughout 2007 and 2008, Office Depot was extremely active in creating educational materials and guides to help our customers go green,” said Yalmaz Siddiqui, Director of Environmental Strategy for Office Depot. “We are very excited to see our efforts being well-received by our customers and rewarded through increased sales of greener office products.”

Efforts that Office Depot undertook to “sell green” in 2007 and 2008 included:

• Introducing Office Depot’s biggest Green Book, which featured nearly 3,000 greener office products;
• Creating a “Greener Office” website with over 5,000 green products including an interactive vignette that brings together all types of office products – supplies, furniture and technology – to help customers understand the key elements of a greener office (www.officedepot.com/yourgreeneroffice);
• Distributing and delivering two presentations – Debunking the Myths about Going Green and Small Steps to a Greener Office – over 15 times at conferences and seminars to encourage customers to rethink perceptions and take practical steps to go green cost-effectively;
• Creating a step-by-step web tool to parallel the power-point presentations, available at www.officedepot.com/greenyouroffice;
• Delivering a green office-focused web-cast, in partnership with Joel Makower, founder of GreenBiz.com (one of the “gurus of green business”) to over 250 individuals and small businesses; and
• Creating a “Greener Alternatives Tool” to help contract customers convert from virgin to remanufactured and/or recycled products.

About The Green Book

The Green Book is one of many channels through which Office Depot sells green products to its customers. Launched in 2003, the Green Book’s fifth iteration will be available in October of 2008. The Green Book includes more than 5,000 products with environmental benefits in addition to more than 10 pages of editorial content providing tips and tools to create a greener office. To order a copy of the Green Book, please visit www.officedepot.com/greenbook.

About the Office Depot Survey

An online omnibus study was conducted using a national panel of consumers from April 9^th through the 10^th. Twenty five hundred completes (representative of the U.S. household population 18+ on age, gender, geographic division, income, household size, household designation and market size) were received.

About Office Depot

Every day, Office Depot is Taking Care of Business for millions of customers around the globe. For the local corner store as well as Fortune 500 companies, Office Depot provides products and services to its customers through 1,705 worldwide retail stores, a dedicated sales force, top-rated catalogs and a $4.9 billion e-commerce operation. Office Depot has annual sales of approximately $15.1 billion, and employs about 49,000 associates around the world. The Company provides more office products and services to more customers in more countries than any other company, and currently sells to customers directly or through affiliates in 48 countries.

Office Depot’s common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ODP and is included in the S&P 500 Index. Additional press information can be found at: http://mediarelations.officedepot.com.

Media materials specific to Office Depot’s environmental initiatives are available at http://mediarelations.officedepot.cc/environment.