UK Cash Industry Environmental ‘Wins’

Members of the UK’s Cash Industry Environmental Charter (CIEC) Group have shared best practice and worked together since 2021 with the aim of reducing the carbon footprint of notes and coins in the cash cycle ¹.

As part of this work, a key focus is reducing plastic waste because, as an industry, the UK cash cycle produces around 504,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year.

UK Finance has recently issued a summary of some of the concrete changes made by members of the CIEC Group.

The story so far

The Bank of England will now take back note cage seals for recycling and are returning cage liners to members of the Note Circulation Scheme for re-use.

G4S, a cash in transit company, has moved from wrapping banknotes in plastic to strapping them, reducing plastic use by 25,000-30,000 bags per annum. Simply by changing the way vehicle trip sheets are printed they have saved around 25,000 sheets of paper per month.