The fact that The Co-operative Bank has again obtained a
number of prestigious awards for its reports and actions
in the last year continues to demonstrate that it still
occupies a prominent leadership role in addressing
sustainability issues within the business context. The
Natural Step (a science-based sustainability initiative, for
which Forum for the Future is the licensee here in the UK)
has continued to work with the bank during this time. It's
in my capacity as Chairman of The Natural Step in the UK
that I have been asked to assess those elements in the
Partnership Report relating to ecological sustainability.
It is once again a very encouraging and informative
Report, with considerable detail provided on the bank's
actions and progress on annual targets. Further progress
has been made in reducing most of its principal
environmental impacts over the last few years - indeed,
most companies would just love to get anywhere near the
kind of performance improvements reported here. The
bank report clearly demonstrates that its overall approach
to environmental management and social responsibility is
by now well embedded across the organisation, and this
is reflected in staff responses to the working environment
and their understanding of the bank's mission.
The proportion of the bank's energy derived from
renewables continues to remain extremely impressive.
But again, given that these 'green kilowatts' are going to
be quite hard to come by as the UK gets its renewables
act together, there's still an issue about total energy
consumption - however much of it comes from
renewables. It would be good to still see a higher priority
on the systematic reduction of energy consumption within
the Report, as much of the 2002 decline resulted from
vacation of premises.
It's good to see that the bank is still vigorously pursuing
sustainable transport policies despite having to tackle an
increase in employee miles and greater use of car hire,
where the bank has less control over the use of low
emission and efficient vehicles.
We are encouraged by the bank's continued commitment
to ecological aspects of its banking products. In
particular, the way all bank mortgages offset 20% of
household carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The
diversification in carbon offset projects funded by the
mortgages is also welcomed. These projects now
address not just the absorption of excess CO2, but also
the prevention of its production in the first place (follow this link to read about the carbon offset projects).
One of the areas where we would like to see more work is
in the Follow this link to read about the Ethical & Ecological Value Analysis.
Though this is a highly innovative approach, it remains
somewhat narrow in focus, and represents only one
aspect (albeit the most important as far as the bank's
financial performance is concerned!) of the much broader
area of accounting systematically for all the bank's
impacts, both positive and negative. The achievements to
date fully justify the bank's leadership role.
But the road to sustainable development, as the bank well
knows, is a long journey. At a time when the public debate
about the role of business in securing a more sustainable
and equitable world is making even more of an impact in
both the media and politics, The Co-operative Bank has a
crucial contribution to make to that debate. There may
well be a strong 'business case' for more responsible
business practices (as this report so eloquently
demonstrates), but that case may itself prove
unsustainable unless it is underpinned by a consistent
and uncompromising moral purpose.
Jonathon Porritt
25th March 2003
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Jonathon Porritt, Chairman of The Natural Step UK |
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