ECB Identifies Banknote Environmental Impact

The European Central Bank (ECB) has issued the findings of its Product Environment Footprint (PEF) study, which focuses on the creation and life cycle of banknotes through to their disposal when they become unfit to circulate.

The ECB wanted to understand the potential end-to-end environmental impact of banknotes as a payment instrument, to help further identify aspects of the lifecycle that can be targeted to reduce the environmental impact of banknotes.

The output of the PEF was a single overall score for the average annual value of cash payments for a Euro Area Citizen (EAC) in 2019, 101 micro points. This is the equivalent of driving a standard car 8 km. The ECB put that in context by comparing it with buying a cotton T shirt and then washing it once a week for a year, which has an EAC equivalent of 55 km, or the manufacture of 71 one and a half litre bottles of water, the average consumption of a European Union (EU) citizen in a year, which is 272 km.