Banking sector in our country has undertaken green banking programme and made a good headway towards implementation. Our banking industry has from time to time replicated many concepts and ideas from developed countries but most of them have been adopted after those were abandoned or found obsolete in the developed world. In this context green banking is an exception and banks in our country have started keeping pace with the developed countries. Green banking is a banking operation that helps protect the environment. Bank itself can play its direct role in improving the environment by manipulating its daily operation and similarly can play its indirect role by motivating or encouraging others to participate in environment protection activity.
E-communication, group email & online Banking: The present era is the computer era, and office automation is everywhere in place, so the use of paper can easily be kept at the minimum. All communications including credit proposals, subsequent communications and even the approval process can be conveniently done through electronic means which not only eliminates the use of paper but also saves time. Further, this electronic means of communication is more authentic because every communication is electronically recorded with date and time. Issuance of circulars either from central bank or from commercial banks can easily be turned into e-circulars. Bangladesh bank should disseminate circulars through email to all commercial banks who will reproduce and circulate those electronically among all the branches. Communications among different departments within the bank and between the branches and Head Office can be efficiently done electronically instead of hard copies.
All banks have developed their own websites and officers working in the banks have been provided with email addresses, so all necessary communications will have to be done through email and no formal letter or hard copy will be required. In this connection, a trial of email executed activities should be followed where bank executives at different levels will give their opinions, recommendation and approval whichever is appropriate. Once final decision is taken, the complete email will be electronically saved in the respective folder for future reference. This e-communication will remove the 'denial culture' as it has been noticed that in the event of a problem, the tendency to shrug off responsibility is common to our everyday work culture. Therefore, it has to be made mandatory that all intra-bank communications, inter-bank communications and communications with the central bank will have to be done electronically. In addition to officers' personal email, a group or departmental email address can be maintained where all the departmental issues should be managed. There are several advantages of departmental email because if one officer is absent, another can handle it. All officers within the department will know who is doing what and the management will be able to continuously monitor what is going on in the department.
The initiative of green banking cannot be made successful if the customers are not involved with this process, and they can easily get themselves involved by extensively using online banking facility. Online banking and e-communication will have to be used widely so that a customer will not have to physically come to the bank except for cash transaction. As a first measure, customers' account will be turned paperless, so bank will neither print nor send any hard copy of account statement to the accountholders although electronic copy can be auto-generated and sent to the account holders' email address. Even the use of deposit book and cheque books will have to be reduced over a period of time. Introducing bank card with secured chip and pin may replace the use of deposit books, while instant electronic fund transfer among the banks can extensively reduce the use of cheque books and popularise the process.
Web-based programme & online resource centre: Banks have their own websites, so they can easily develop a system using web-based programme where all the concerned officers/executives will have access. Credit department, remittance department, LC department, accounts department will have separate independent web-based system to exclusively discharge the activities of each department. All requests, applications, credit proposals, LC applications requiring decision and approval will be uploaded in that web-based system and once submitted, approving department will be able to review and decide on it. When decision is taken, the approval will automatically go back to the executing level. This is the modern system of approval procedure and it has many advantages because it expedites the approval process. Moreover, this process is time-bound and recorded chronologically, so it can easily be tracked down whenever necessary.
In banking activity all documents especially application, approval, circular, office memorandum, communications are required to be retained for a certain period and this can easily be done by saving those electronically. Each department will maintain a common folder in the bank's net-work drive where departmental documents will be saved and used as and when necessary.
In modern banking a sound resource centre is inevitable, so banks can create and maintain a resource centre in their own websites where all the required circulars, central bank manuals, bank's own manuals for different divisions, necessary legal books, some acts (negotiable instrument act, contact act, stamp act), UCPDC (Uniform Customs and Practice of Documentary Credit) and other reference materials may be retained. Establishment of on-line resource centre will eliminate the need for hard copies and also make the reference books, manuals and circulars readily available for use.
E-guidelines & email auditing: The limitation of e-communication is the possibility of leaking bank's confidential documents which may expose the bank to operational and reputational risks. In order to mitigate this risk, banks must have to develop e-guideline where the responsibility, confidentiality, violation and punishment will be clearly stated. Moreover, there will be common agreement among all banks where it will be clearly stated that if they receive any communication or attachment mistakenly, these will be returned or destroyed. Nevertheless, some violations will occur and therefore auditing of emails will have to be introduced. Every IT department will have an audit team which will periodically check the emails and report any violation to the concerned compliance department.
Recycling of paper and car pooling: When computer was invented it was said that this device will reduce the use of paper but in reality, the reverse has happened. In spite of efforts towards full automation, printing could not be eliminated completely, so there will always be some printing needs which can be done with recycled paper. If paper manufacturing industry in our country has not installed paper recycling machine, they can be encouraged to install these machinery for recycling used paper. In this connection specially designed recycle bin may be used by each office for dropping all waste paper and the recycle team will deliver this recycle bin to the respective paper/cartoon manufacturing company. By introducing this paper recycling process, our environment will not only be benefitted, some kind of employment will be generated too.
Another detrimental element is carbon emission which adversely affects our environment. Carbon emission is caused by the excessive use of fuel by motor vehicle, machines and equipment. Green banking may contribute to reduce carbon emission in the cities. Now many bankers have their own vehicles which they use for commuting to offices. This practice can be substantially improved if car pooling is introduced. Car pooling is the sharing of car by more than one person. Because of car pooling, three or four officers living in the same area may come together using one person's vehicle. Some kind of incentive like fuel cost reimbursement, reserved parking etc., will encourage the officers to participate in car pooling programme. The introduction of car pooling will not only reduce carbon emission in the environment but also help ease traffic congestion.
Bank's role in involving others: Under green banking programme, banks must have important role in encouraging others to extensively contribute to the improvement of environment. Banks can develop environment guideline as part of their lending policy and environment compliance can be made a mandatory precondition for approving any credit proposal. Moreover, banks may consider introducing preferential treatment for those customers who will maintain environment friendly factory premises or manufacturing plants. This preferential treatment may include lower interest rate, longer credit term, easy and quick approval process, financing for special purpose etc. Banks may encourage customers to generate electricity from solar energy or wind energy.
Water treatment is another big concern in our country as most of the manufacturing units do not have water treatment plant, resultantly our ground water and soil structure are seriously affected by factory wastes. Banks can extend financing facility with easy terms and conditions to the manufacturing units for installing water treatment plants.
Implementation of green banking is a long-term project involving considerable finance. But cost should not be the primary concern because it is one of the ways whereby environmental hazards can be mitigated to a certain extent. Everywhere in the world, environment friendly measures are expensive, yet people adopt it because this is no way costlier than our precious environment. Our central bank has a great role to play in this regard sibce commercial banks cannot do much with depositors' money. So the central bank should be more forthcoming by way of providing financing facility for extensively implementing this very laudable programme.
