Sustainable Finance and Banking

7

Internal Environmental Care

INTRODUCTION

Although banking is not considered to be a polluting industry, the scale of banking operations nonetheless gives rise to important environmental effects and banks are increasingly focusing on environmental care. While they impose demands on their customers’ processes and products, they are responsible for similar concerns of their own. When paying lip service to sustainability in their external statements and in the media, banks run the risk of being held to account for not confronting the environmental impact inherent in their own activities. If banks are lax in their own responsibilities, they lose credibility in the eyes of their customers. Credibility is gained by a transparency in their approach, ...