Climate-neutral current accounts: Sparkasse promotes more sustainability

Created: 08/29/2022, 12:00 p.m

Jenny Christiani (left), together with Thomas Orbig and Natalie Grasegger-Boos, presented the project of the "climate-neutral managed private current account".

© Bianca R. Heigl

In 2020, Sparkasse Oberland signed a self-commitment for climate-friendly and sustainable management.

Now there are climate-neutral managed private current accounts.

District – As the first bank in southern Upper Bavaria, Sparkasse Oberland, on its way to more sustainability, has focused on the product that almost every customer has: the private current account.

CEO Thomas Orbig, sustainability manager Jenny Christiani and Natalie Grasegger-Boos, head of the board staff, presented the innovation at a press conference.

As Jenny Christiani explained, each checking account causes an average of 10.2 kilograms of CO2 emissions.

This is done through the supply of cash, the bank's share of CO2 emissions, transactions, online banking, the website and account management.

Extrapolated to all private checking accounts, this results in the considerable amount of more than 1000 tons of CO2, which in turn corresponds to the weight of about 180 adult elephants.

The CO2 footprint of the private current account was determined with the support of "Climate Partner", a company that offers companies solutions for climate protection by helping them to calculate and reduce CO2 emissions, implement climate protection strategies and offset CO2 emissions through climate protection projects.

In this way, companies and products can become climate-neutral.

By the way:

Everything from the region is now also available in our regular Schongau newsletter and our regular Weilheim-Penzberg newsletter.

Sparkasse wants to reduce emissions: Cash supply also optimized

According to Julia Bewerunge from Climate Partner, emissions that cannot be directly assigned, such as employee commutes or business trips, are also taken into account.

To avoid emissions, the savings bank has switched to recycling paper, optimized the supply of cash and further reduced paper consumption.

"But our customers can also help reduce CO2 emissions, for example by paying by card or online instead of cash, since cash transactions are unfortunately very CO2-intensive," says Thomas Orbig.

For the CO2 offset, the Sparkasse decided on a climate protection project that combines climate protection with social added value - a project certified with Gold Standard.

By providing micro-energy credits, business owners in India can offer energy-efficient products such as clean stoves, water filters or solar lights at an affordable price and households can afford them - a project that saves an average of 100,000 tons of CO2 annually.

But regional climate protection is also very important to the Sparkasse.

In order to strengthen the local forests and raise employees' awareness of climate protection issues, around 700 seedlings will be planted together with the Oberammergau private forest community - one for each employee, according to Orbig.

Another regional focus is the moor renaturation in Weilheim initiated by the Greensurance Foundation.

The savings bank is the first partner there to finance around 1,000 square meters of renaturation.

by Bianca Heigl

Here you can find more current news from the region around Schongau and Weilheim.