Cash Sustainability with a Latin American Twist

The Cash Sustainability Forum has to date been held as a standalone event in Europe but, this year, it went regional for a one day workshop at HSP Latin America, held in conjunction with the International Currency Association.

The agenda was developed in response to a survey of Caribbean and Latin American central banks about their work on sustainability. 46% of countries in the region replied to the survey, with priority areas identified as: 

• Durability of banknotes
• Recycling of unfit banknotes
• Biodiversity & the environment – CO2, water, waste etc.
• Cash handling
• Adopting sustainable cotton as a substrate.

The environmental initiatives already under way, unsurprisingly, matched those areas – with finding new ways to dispose of unfit notes the priority, followed by durability, the cash cycle, including sustainability in the procurement of banknotes, and finding new materials to reduce the impact of the cash cycle on the environment and to safeguard biodiversity. While many countries use more than one way to dispose of their notes, eight still send notes to landfill and seven burn them with energy recovery. Seven countries include procurement in their banknote tenders, if only to a limited extent.