Cash industry environmental “wins”

With sustainability always a hot topic, this seems to be a good time to re-publicise the work being undertaken across the cash industry to reduce the carbon footprint of notes and coins.

Members of the Cash Industry Environmental Charter Group have shared best practice and worked together to make a number of changes in this space, some of which are listed below.

The story so far

Bank of England will now take back note cage seals for recycling and are returning cage liners to members for re-use.

G4S moved from wrapping banknotes in plastic to strapping them, reducing plastic use by 25,000 - 30,000 bags per annum. Simply by changing the way vehicle trip sheets are printed they have saved around 25,000 sheets of paper per month.

Lloyds Banking Group has removed Plastic Bank Note Envelopes (PBNEs) from their branch work.

Loomis has reduced the size of many of their bags, moved to 30 per cent recycled plastic for stationery items and implemented closed loop recycling, ensuring that all waste is reused or recycled into new products.

NatWest moved to standard cash order values for branches, reducing both the amount of effort required to pack/check and the need for plastic overwrapping. All plastic used is now comprised of between 30 and 60 per cent recycled content and paper envelopes are being used for branch deposits.

Santander debit and credit cards are made from recycled plastic and there are deposit boxes in branches for the public to recycle expired cards. These are shredded securely then the plastic is reused.

Tesco cash is delivered to stores in paper bands rather than PBNEs, removing around 150,000 bags each year from their operations.

Vaultex now use environmentally friendly sugar cane-based paper, rather than wood-based and in October they moved to using 100 per cent renewable energy. They have removed PBNEs from their own operations, saving over 4.1 million bags per year and are also now using smaller bags for some coin denominations. Where possible, they have moved from plastic consumables to reusable/permanent alternatives. Using reusable cable ties rather than plastic seals has saved over 50kg of plastic per year.

Virgin Money branches also now use paper envelopes to deposit notes into cash centres and most single use plastic pouches used in branches have been replaced with reusable ones.

The new seals used on Bank of England cages are made of less virgin plastic and are fully recyclable. A review is underway of the security bags currently in use with the aim of reducing sizes and creating uniformity across the industry. A paper has been written detailing the environmental impact of bronze coin.

What can customers do?

A subgroup of the main Environmental Charter Group has produced a presentation guide for customers to ensure that cash is deposited in the most efficient way, saving on wrapping and reducing the machine time required for processing. It has already been circulated to members of UK Finance, the BRC, ACS and BIRA but you can download your own copy of the guide here.

Still working together

In summary, whilst it is acknowledged that cash handling is hands-on and resource heavy, all participants in the supply chain are doing their best to reduce its impact on the environment, make processes more efficient and keep cash available for everyone.

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