Green business bank account

[JBjorn]

I'm looking for a green/ethical business account for my business. I'm trying to reduce my business' carbon footprint. Does anyone have any recommendations?

 

[Ozzy]

Who you bank with is going to make almost zero difference on your carbon footprint. How you carry out your banking with any bank will, for example trading cash and driving to the bank every day in a Land Rover to bank the cash will create more carbon than trading via BACS payments.

So, honestly, forget this thought process because no bank option will make a difference. At best some may plant a couple of trees and pretend it is saving the world.

For what it is worth, UKBF does have a bank partnership with a digital bank that will have a low carbon footprint than many others;

 

[JBjorn]

Thanks Ozzy. I've read otherwise from places like The Guardian, Bank.Green and My Mother Tree. (I cannot post the links)

They talk about the emissions of the money we hold with our bank.

Bank.green rate CashPlus/Zempler as Ok which is good to see!

Does anyone else have any thoughts?

 

[Ozzy]

Thanks Ozzy. I've read otherwise from places like The Guardian, Bank.Green and My Mother Tree.

As you can tell. I do not believe all those claims as they are all much the same. The just spend a bit of money to buy their green credentials, not actually how the business operates.

 

[Volteface]

Hi JBorn,
We switched to the Cooperative Bank because they were recommended by the FSB but I believe they may not be as ethical as we would like, having been bought out by an American hedge fund... we are considering switching (no easy feat so won't do it until we have really done our research thoroughly). Read recently about NZBA (Net Zero Banking Alliance) which some UK banks have signed up to, but looking at the mainstream UK banks on the list this might appear to be greenwashing... look forward to others comments, also on ethical banking.

 

[Volteface]

Apologies for misspelling your name

 

[fisicx]

Greenwashing is a thing. Businesses all try to claim they have green credentials but almost all are making it up.

All banks use data centres which by default use huge amounts of resource both in the hardware and operations. If you really want to go green run a local business, sell the car and buy a bike. Or variations thereof.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make an effort to use less resources but changing banks isn’t worth the effort.

My contribution is to grow a lot of my own food and recycle everything.

 

[antropy]

Greenwashing is a thing. Businesses all try to claim they have green credentials but almost all are making it up.

Agreed.

Spend the time and effort going paperless, doing online meetings instead of in-person, driving an electric car, allowing staff to work from home etc.

Paul.

 

[zakgott]

Hi JBjorn. That's a great question! Contrary to what others have noted, depending on your business's finances, where you bank can make a pretty significant different to your carbon footprint. The fact is, banks use customer deposits to make loans, which can be good or bad for the climate. For some of the world’s largest corporations in fact, it turns out that the climate impact associated with their cash and investments is bigger than everything else they do to address climate emissions across their entire extended operations. There is a report that details the evidence for this called The Carbon Bankroll that you may wish to Google.

Now, in terms of your question of switching to a green or ethical provider: The first thing is to ensure your bank is not a heavy financier of fossil fuels. Once that's established, you'll want a bank that shows that it is taking climate change seriously by doing things like measuring its scope 3 emissions, setting near and long-term reduction targets for these, and of course, that has a strong policy that excludes most types of fossil fuel lending. I'm the founder of a nonprofit called Bank.Green where we investigate these issues using a methodology we've developed to evaluate how serious a financial institution is taking climate change (we recently rated the top 103 financial institutions in the UK using this). 



Once you've established that a prospective bank cares about its climate impact, you might then wish to look into how much they lend to renewable energy or other climate-positive initiatives (Handelsbanken and Virgin Money are both significant lenders to renewable projects, for example), so that you can be sure your money is fully aligned with your values and working towards a better future.

We recently developed a PDF with all of our top-rated institutions in the UK that serve businesses either with account offerings or via their lending.

And good on your for taking this important step in reducing your business's carbon footprint!

 

[Mark T Jones]

About 10 years ago I moved my personal account to coop on the back of their green and social credentials

They are singularity the most useless bank I've ever had to deal with.

It's a worthy idea, but mostly fllawed