Cash & Payments Sustainability Forum
Bringing together the cash cycle for a greener future
The inaugural Cash & Payments Sustainability Forum, which took place 14-16 November in Edinburgh, is the only event that brings together all the stakeholder in the cash cycle, and beyond, to work towards sustainability in the production, circulation and destruction of one of the world’s most enduring and widely used products.
It shares best practice, promote cooperation and address specific environmental challenges and solutions in the cash and payments arena. The date, location and format for the next Cash & Payments Sustainability Forum will be announced shortly.
Organised by Reconnaissance International, publishers of last year’s white paper “Cash: a Roadmap to Sustainability”, the event is styled as a forum to focus on practitioners and decision makers. It is about adding value so that everybody learns, thinks, networks and comes away better able to develop policy, assess performance and options, work with others and implement new ideas.
The Forum will be in five parts,
Setting the scene
Sustainability has created an industry with acronyms, abbreviations, terminology, metrics and accreditations for each and every part. We will run sessions to provide a common understanding, a base line, for where the sustainability ‘industry’ is relevant to what we do. As part of this we will consider the areas of challenge, complexity, confusion and risk.
We will also consider the role of the central bank, ISO14001, ESG reports, greenwashing, top down and/or bottom-up change.
Best practice
We know there are great examples of organisations, central banks, private and government owned suppliers, making significant progress reducing their environmental impact. We will give them the opportunity to share what they have done and with what result.
We also want to cover topics such as how central banks can reduce the impact of cash and the cash cycle, how to commission an LCA or CFA and how to move ESG from greenwashing to being a programme driver. Across cash production and cash handling, what makes a difference and what is the commitment and cost?
Co-operation
We want to highlight the benefits of co-operation supplier to supplier, and at a cash cycle level, ie. the cash cycle end-to-end offers opportunities for standardising packaging, standardising materials, reusing materials, data sharing to optimise cash movements, process changes regulated by central banks etc.
We have the real example of cross-industry co-operation in the experience of the UK’s Cash Industry Environmental Charter group and there will be others.
Staff engagement is good for morale and is a powerful driver of change and progress. We will look at how this can be done.
Specific challenges
Specific challenges range from agreeing industry wide metrics for ESG reports and LCAs, establishing appropriate criteria to include in tenders, and what weighting to give them, disposing of notes at the end of life, green energy purchasing, deciding when carbon offsetting is right and how to do it well, reducing ATM energy use and the use of fossil fuels for cash movements.
Technology focus
We have seen work on everything from capturing and reusing heat, energy generation, wastewater management, end of life solutions, achieving a ‘circular’ economy and re-purposing of track and trace solutions to enable reuse of materials and plastic separation. We will focus on how technology can help sustainability, looking both at innovations within the cash cycle and examples from other industries and sectors.
Who should attend
Anybody involved in or responsible for what their organisation does around sustainability. This is intended as a forum where people working on sustainability can learn, exchange views and explore.
Central bank/treasury banknote and coin issue departments:
- Policy
- Cash management
- Procurement
- Vault management
- Cash centre managers
Cash manufacturers:
- Coin blank manufacturers and mints
- Substrate, security feature component and ink suppliers
- Prepress, printing and finishing equipment manufacturers
- Banknote printers
Cash cycle stakeholders:
- Currency machine sorting and handling manufacturers
- Cash management and cash in transit companies
- Destruction and end of life machine and management companies
- Financial institutions, retailers
Environmental solution providers:
- Energy suppliers
- Wastewater solution providers
- Circular economy experts
- Waste solution companies
- ESG software specialists
- Life cycle assessment (LCA)/carbon footprint assessment (CFA)
- Carbon offsetting specialists
About Us
The Cash & Payments Sustainability Forum is brought to you by Reconnaissance International, co-publishers of the industry newsletters Currency News and Cash & Payment News, along with various directories and reports including the recent white paper ‘Cash: a Roadmap to Sustainability’.
Reconnaissance also organises a range of industry networking conferences and forums each year around the topics of cash, coins, high security printing and authentication.
Putting the Envrionment Centre Stage
The Cash & Payments Sustainability Forum™ in Edinburgh was an industry first. As such it was very much an experiment, a step into the unknown.
Following on from the November 2021 white paper, ‘Cash: A Roadmap to Sustainability’, and a series of conference seminars throughout 2022, the goal was to take a systematic and in-depth look at sustainability for central banks, cash producers and the cash management sector.
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