Bringing Together an Industry on Sustainability

NatWest is committed to shaping and accelerating the UK’s cash cycle transition to a lower carbon economy. As part of this commitment in September 2020 NatWest brought together 36 organisations including UK Finance, the Bank of England, commercial banks, Retailers and ATM suppliers to discuss sustainability and the environmental impact of cash.

There was agreement that co-operation would help, although quite what or how to take this forward needed more work. This online meeting agreed to set up three working groups to consider options.

The result was proposals for cross industry working groups working on saving energy, reducing the use of single use non-recyclable plastic and CO2 emissions. In addition, a set of targets was agreed, and all this was put into a charter along with specific targets. Organisations were asked to sign up to the charter by the end of January 2021.