Environment & Personal Finance
Time To Bank Green Too
Climate change has been a tough issue to fully address. But there is a simple step you personally can take towards reducing your carbon footprint.
2020 has been a year of revelations and learnings for everyone. It’s been a year where the problems of the world have been exposed, from racial injustice and political unrest, horrible pandemic responses and unfortunately, many more unresolved issues worldwide. It’s extremely important to have conversations around these topics but today, I’m talking about climate change.
No singular action can fix any of these issues but for climate change there is an easier path to take action. Simple measures are necessary to get the ball rolling, especially in the face of a monumental obstacle. (I’m not an expert on any of these topics, I’m just relaying my self-education from this past year.)
We are in a whole heap of a mess.
Mother Nature has potentially reached a point-of-no-return. There are already countless studies presenting the facts and important effects for climate change so I won’t blabber on unnecessarily. NASA’s Climate Change & Global Warming website is a great starting collection of facts & evidence of global warming and the causes of it.
Information about climate change can be daunting at first. The Earth has warmed by 1ºC (2ºF). The Arctic and Antartica have warmed 2.5ºC(4.5ºF) since 1950s. Those numbers don’t seem like a whole lot right? To put these numbers into context, those minuscule average changes have amounted to the Arctic losing around 95% of its oldest ice. Even the smallest of changes can amount to really impactful changes in the environment and climate.
The Earth is in a battle to stay alive right now. We are literally living out the worst-case scenario projections for global warming and it doesn’t look too bright if we continue on the same path. It’s going to take a whole lot to get out of this grave we’ve dug ourselves into in just the past century, but action is being taken.
What is the rest of the world doing about this?
You might feel powerless when looking at all these overwhelming facts and figures. How can you possibly go against the past 70 plus years of change as an individual? But you are not alone.
There are huge international corporations built solely around sustainable development. More and more startups have environment impact at the forefront of their business instead of an afterthought. These startups have even been coined their own names in the industry, “Green Startups”.
Treeapp is a great example of a recent startup focused on the environment. They allow you to plant a tree every single day for free. It’s an amazing company and they’ve blown up majorly in the past year, considering they only started in January 2020. They’ve already planted over a million trees from the app in the past year and over 450 million trees working with partners.
Apple is a large company that is leading the industry in keeping the environment in mind across its design and manufacturing process. Despite being a hardware-based business, with over 75% of carbon emissions released by manufacturing, Apple has taken great strides in reducing their carbon footprint. 100% of Apple’s retail stores, data centres and offices are powered by renewable energy starting in 2018. They’ve also committed to being completely carbon-neutral by 2030 and they even have a recycling robot named Daisy. (Yes they’ve named their ‘recycling robot’…)
Businesses are traditionally established for profit only, but in the last decade or so, the industry has shifted incredibly. Companies like TreeApp, Ocean Bottle and Skoot have all redefined the meaning of ‘Ethical Businesses’ and more companies are following suit. The environment is certainly a demand to be met and lots of companies are stepping up.
What can you personally do? Bank Greener.
It takes one step at a time, as Jordin Sparks famously sings, to take action to achieve greater results. Even with great efforts from massive companies, us consumers still play a role. Particularly in our money, and more specifically, where we put our money.
Have you ever wondered, where does your money go when you deposit in a bank? Does it just sit in a vault right behind the help desk until the fateful day you finally decide to withdraw it? Banks can loan your money to others at an interest to earn money like mortgages and credits, fund other factions of their business but most importantly, invest in other businesses. (In our case, fossil fuels.)
Through the website SwitchIt, I discovered that most banks actually still invest in fossil fuels. They’re a newly founded company with the mission to educate and stop the funding and use of fossil fuels. The website is full of resources and information on how to remove yourself from fossil fuel-funding banks and go greener.
Forbes has even published an article in March 2020 talking about fossil fuel-funding organisations and linked to the 2020 Banking on Climate Change Report with cases of 35 banks (page 28 of report) and their expenditure in the fossil fuel industry.
It takes a single action.
Switching banks can sound like the biggest hassle ever, like digging up your roots and moving them elsewhere. But most banks nowadays have switching services to make these moves easier with less friction in the moving process.
Some quick research is all it takes to look for a bank that is reliable yet ethically-motivated. There are countless startups in the FinTech field looking to take a piece of the pie while still doing the right thing, for example, Monzo and Dozens in the UK and Chime from San Franscisco. Your options are abundant in this day and age.
If this article hasn’t inspired you to take action, I hope at the very least it’s made you rethink your banking choices and your environmental impact. Follow for more about the environment because in the next article, I’ll be talking about carbon-neutrality and how we can play a part ourselves!
Thank you very much!
Thank you for taking the time to read my article. Feel free to leave a comment or feedback!
