Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions Champions Sustainability in Currency Production

Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions (KBBS) has published its Banconota Spring/Summer edition dedicated to one subject, sustainability. The focus of the piece is how KBBS is helping its customers reduce the environmental impact of what they do.

While the European Central Bank’s (ECB) 2019 Product Environmental Product (PEF) analysis demonstrated that the annual environmental impact of cash payments for one person for a year is the equivalent of somebody driving a standard car for 8km, the conversion of materials and substrate into a finished banknote via the printing process only accounts for 3% of the total PEF of banknotes in the eurozone. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be striving to reduce it even further.

Ironically just as the wider cash service system is becoming less sustainable because of falling volumes, banknote production has become more sustainable. Even in this context, the cash service sector is working hard to reduce energy, transportation and plastics. Banknote production operations are using greener materials such as sustainable cotton, increasing note life by coating and varnishing substrates, using less and/or more renewable energy and managing waste to produce less of it, to recirculate it and to dispose of it better.