In 2022 Coop Pank became the first Estonian bank to get involved in one of the world’s leading environmental reporting initiatives, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). We were given a rating of B-, which is to say that of an environmental leader, which is awarded for good management in the field of environmental impact.
In 2022 we also became a member of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and signed the Principles of Responsible Banking, bringing the bank’s business strategy into alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement so as to increase our positive impact on society.
We’ve decided not to finance projects that are harmful to people or the environment, instead offering more and more products that promote the wider spread of environmentally friendly technologies and that help to reduce our carbon footprint. We follow the same criteria when outsourcing the services we need for our operations.
It’s important to us at Coop Pank that we measure the impact our operations have on the environment. In order to reduce the carbon footprint of what we do, in 2021 we relocated our head office from Narva Highway to the new and more economical Skyon building, which was constructed in accordance with the requirements of the LEED Platinum certificate. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is one of the most prevalent green building rating systems in the world. A LEED certificate shows that a building was constructed in line with the principles of sustainability and energy efficiency, using environmentally friendly materials and ensuring the quality of the internal climate.
In 2021 we became the first Estonian bank to assess the carbon footprint of our offices and loan portfolio in accordance with the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, and we did this again in 2022.
Coop Pank’s carbon footprint for 2022 was measured as being 209,240 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, 99.7% of which stems from our portfolio and leasing activities and 0.3% from our office-based activities. The calculations revealed that the biggest impact we have as a bank arises from our lending activities and that the financing of environmentally friendly projects significantly helps to mitigate this negative impact.
It’s important to us that we also turn attention to what we do as an organisation. For example, in our head office, where almost 85% of our staff work, we don’t use separate waste paper bins at every desk. We sort our waste by type: we gather up recyclable packaging and return it to collection points, donating the money we get back on it to organisations that arrange for kids to go to the theatre.
We’re increasingly opting for paper-free document management in our everyday work: we enter into agreements with our clients and partners electronically and allow clients to join the bank via a simple online solution.
In 2022 Coop Pank entered into a cooperation agreement with GreenDice, which designs the ideal consumption cycles for technology products. The company will now organise the recycling and repurposing of the group’s used IT equipment. GreenDice’s system helps attain maximum value from used IT devices, finding new users for them or sending devices which are no longer usable for recycling as raw materials. The usage journey of the devices can be tracked at every point in their life cycle. We attach great importance to the safe and traceable journey of devices
More details of our carbon footprint can be found here (for 2021) and here (for 2022).