Cash and COP26

This November, COP26, the UN climate change conference, will take place in Glasgow. Cash & Payment News™ and its sister paper Currency News™ have started work on a paper, ‘Cash: a Roadmap to Sustainability’, ahead of the conference.

There are two audiences for this paper – the decision makers and influencers who will attend COP26, and the worldwide industry who work on cash and the cash cycle from its creation to destruction. There are two messages.

Firstly, given that cash is going to exist and be used in large volumes around the world for decades to come, it is important that COP26 delegates understand that the environmental impact of cash and other payment methods is not a matter of one being good and one being bad, but that the gap is close and, thanks to the efforts of the industry, closing.