Finance
Cash industry on road to sustainability Currency & Payment Consultant, Reconnaissance International
working and succeeding in being a ‘good citizen.’
It is exciting to talk about the future, about what is new, but sometimes a mature product can surprise and delight. Cash, coins and banknotes, and the ‘industry’ that makes and supports them is perhaps one such example. When it comes to sustainability and environmental impact, one might assume that a digital payment has a significantly lower environmental impact than cash, but a new paper, ‘Cash: a roadmap to sustainability,’ challenges that perception. It also describes an industry
The paper puts this work in the context of research by central banks into the environmental impact of cash and debit cards which, while confirming that cash does have a higher environmental impact, shows both that the order of magnitude is similar, and the impact is extremely small. Cash represents 0.009% of the environmental impact of the Dutch economy, for example.
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The paper has collected from 24
organisations 106 examples of what they have done to reduce their environmental impact from the creation of coins and banknotes through their issue and circulation to their destruction. This offers real examples, and inspiration, for others working with cash in particular, and manufacturing in general, about what is possible. Motivation for change Self-interest. Working with the companies to write this paper, a number of drivers became apparent behind their work. Clearly profit, the bottom line, matters to