Green Banking - What is your financial institution doing?

Gillian, here are a few simple ones. Start simply. Look inside your institution. You mentioned in your question some good ones. How about asking your employees to to buy Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs for their home, give out Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs when people open new accounts, replace old fashioned office Fluorescent Light Bulbs with modern LED replacements, convert branch signage to LEDs, statement mailings with recycled paper and corn starch based window envelopes, have employees bring old mugs to work from home and stop providing paper cups at the office coffee machine. I could go on and on with a bunch of simple things and never get to carbon emission offsetting.

Who else has a couple of simple ideas?

@dmgerbino

GREAT QUESTION Gillian! I’m going to recommend this to some of my other friends to get their perspective.

There is much talk about the benefits you can have from greening your data center too. From technologies like virtualization of servers can cut down on the massive amount of electrical output to having smaller data centers to cut down on cooling costs of cooling those centers.

Another more obvious option is cash. You can offset your carbon footprint by donating money to places that can improve the environment. Al Gore does this so he can still live in the big houses. ;)

Gillian,

A huge one is e-statements, or even just letting customers opt out of receiving paper statements. Think about the paper & inks used for statement pages and envelopes. There’s a huge environmental benefit to cutting down on this paper usage, and there’s a financial benefit to the bank as well…sending those things every month is expensive!

As for things you can do internally, here’s an easy one: when you leave for the day turn off your monitor, and check to see if everyone around you has done the same. Maybe it’s just my office, but I’ve found everyone leaves their monitor on when they shut down their computer and go home for the evening, so they stay on and pointlessly draw power for 2/3 of the day. That may not make a huge difference, but it’s easy and costs nothing.

Thanks for everyone’s feedback!

Interesting fact from a paper on Green Banking (“The Four E’s of Green Banking – Educate, Enable, Make It Easy – And Be Ernest”) by Javelin Research: Three out of four consumers get paper statements and if every U.S. household used only eStatements, online bill presentment and online bill payment options, 687,000 tons of paper would be saved in only one year. This is enough paper to circle the earth 239 times!

I guess to me, being a little bit of a tree hugger and working for a company that offers online banking solutions, it amazes me how much paper, gas and money a person can save by banking online…You can really do absolutely everything you can do in a branch, online…open a new checking account, fund it, apply for a loan application and get instant approval, pay bills, transfer money, etc. Technology is an amazing thing!

The issue of ‘green banking’ raises some major concerns for me – especially with many institutions jumping on the ‘going green’ bandwagon doing little more than offering paperless statements (because it saves the institution money) and marketing it with a clever green message. When it comes to environmentally friendly initiatives, institutions need to have a clear plan in mind – are you looking to: A) Make your institution more environmentally friendly (i.e. recycle, save energy, reduce carbon footprint, etc.), or B) give your customers/members an opportunity to become more environmentally friendly (i.e. have paperless statements, buy a hybrid vehicle, donate to an environmental organization, etc.)?

As consumers become more sensitive to greenwashing, financial institutions need to ensure that their claims are supported through action. All of the examples mentioned here are good ones – it’s when institutions offer more lipservice than substance around the issue of green that it can hurt your brand more than it will help.

Today Citizen’s Financial of Providence launched a new incentive program to move customers away from checks and cash in favor or electronic payments. They mention in the article that customers will be automatically enrolled in online banking and paperless statements. Along with this they will receive a program Mastercard debit card made from recycled plastic. A neat statistic mentioned in the article says that the average family, by going paperless can save seven pounds of paper, 63 gallons of water and 24 square feet of forest a year according to Citizen’s. Below is a link to the article.

http://www.americanbanker.com/btn_article.html?id=20081010SJPZHYQW&email=y

@Brady You hit the nail on the head. I have been saying that where I work. You really do need to be careful with all these green initiatives. Do your research and start small. That way you can hopefully avoid any backlash.

@dmgerbino