Environmental impact Medium
Employer/employee ranking 4/15
Staff numbers 9,778
Energy reduction 4%
Recycling n/a

Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) is proving to be as good with the environment as it is with money.

The pursuit of sustainability is a strategic imperative for Britain’s largest consumer co-operative, which includes Co-operative Insurance and the Co-operative Bank.

The company, which employs 9,778 staff in 146 offices across the UK, offers green mortgages, eco insurance and even produces some of its own energy, helping it to win our green award for best large company with medium environmental impact.

These initiatives help earn it a green score of 91% from staff for doing a lot for the environment, the seventh highest score for this.

Employees say that CFS meets its environmental targets year on year (80%), think the company is reducing its impact on the environment and say their friends and family think it is green (both 85%).

Two years ago CFS completed the transformation of the 400ft, 25-storey landmark Co-operative Insurance Solar Tower in Manchester with the installation of more than 7,000 photovoltaic (PV) solar panels (Britain’s largest solar power installation), and last year it put 19 micro-wind turbines on the roof of its 13-storey Portland Street building in the same city. This investment and other environmentally friendly initiatives are paying off. Despite increasing its property portfolio by 19% in 2007 with new regional banking and insurance centres, CFS has reduced its energy consumption by 4% and increased the amount of general waste recycled from 67% to 72%.

Since 1998, CFS has pledged not to do deals that will cost the earth by refusing to invest in any business whose core activity contributes to global climate change through the extraction or production of fossil fuels. More than £110m of finance opportunities have been declined by the Co-op since as a result of this pledge.

Employees’ pension plans also have an ethical investment policy (71%, the second-highest green score on this question).

Carbon offsetting has been a feature of all of the Co-operative Bank’s mortgages for eight years and of car insurance policies for the past two. For every year that a customer holds a mortgage, the bank pays to offset a fifth of a typical UK home’s CO2 emissions.

Mortgage customers are also offered a free home energy rating on house purchases. And for each year that a motor insurance policy is held, Co-operative Insurance will offset 20% of the car’s CO2 emissions. Last year a total of 47,833 tons of CO2 offset were purchased.

In March 2007, CFS announced its intention to go beyond carbon neutral by offsetting all of its remaining operational and business travel emissions, together with an extra 10% per year to begin to offset emissions from previous years.

The bank also offers a credit card that gives consumers a lower rate of interest for designated ethical purchases and, the first time they use it, CFS pledges to buy and protect half an acre of Brazilian rainforest in the customer’s name.

The company has committed to reduce its energy consumption by 25% by 2012 (based on 2005 levels) and will generate 15% of its energy requirements from its own renewable sources.

Workers say that the firm’s environmental commitments are at the heart of how it operates (87%) and that it goes for the best green solution rather than the cheapest one (80%).