Steady Sustainability Progress in UK Cash Cycle

The UK’s Cash Industry Environmental Charter Group (CIEC), which consists of more than 30 organisations active in cash working together to establish best practice and drive change, has reported on its progress. Highlights include:

• Trialling a new kind of security seal for banknote cages, which can be permanently attached with only a small security tag that has to be discarded on each use. If successful, this would reduce the plastic used in seals by about 60%. The used seals are also recyclable.

• Barclays Bank has reduced paper usage by 60% since 2020 by stopping staff printing unless they can prove a specific need to do so. An internal audit has revised what constitutes an acceptable audit trail as a result.

• The Royal Mint has built a new solar farm and added an additional wind turbine, a combined heat and power plant and a battery storage facility. Its aim is to generate 70% of its own power on-site. It is building a precious metals recovery plant for use in a range of jewellery.

• CIT providers have been using the latest in telematics data to ensure that vehicles are not left idling while collections and deliveries are made. This is reported to have already significantly reduced their fuel consumption and associated level of emissions (but not by how much).

• Coventry Building Society, working with G4S, will roll out a scheme to remove small plastic coin bags to save 250,000 single use plastic sachets each year.

• HSBC has been trialling plastic card recycling machines in selected branches. The shredded cards are handled securely and recycled into plastic pellets which can then be reused.

The CIEC’s Cash Industry Environment Charter was launched in 2021, resulting from an UK industry-wide summit convened by the retail bank NatWest Group in September 2020 that led to a series of cross-industry working groups being established (see CN February 2021).

This work is now being led UK Finance, the collective voice for the banking and finance industry, to encourage further collaboration and information sharing, as well as the establishment of base line data and a review of industry standards.

It is supported by the Bank of England and all the key stakeholders in the UK cash cycle, with a specific focus on reducing energy consumption, carbon emissions and plastics, and has set key targets to achieve these.