HNB publishes first carbon neutral, GRI check Annual Report in South Asia

Hatton National Bank, one of Sri Lanka’s pioneering financial services institutions, set the standard for South Asia by publishing the first carbon neutral Annual Report for the region. The bank’s Annual Report for the financial year 2010 was published as a carbon neutral publication.

As an organisation, HNB follows a concerted, sustainable business strategy. Its sustainability ethos is one that is deeply embedded in the overall business strategy and therefore intrinsic to the way in which the bank conducts its business. The bank’s carbon neutral Annual Report for 2010 is a reflection of this sustainable business strategy and a direct outcome of HNB’s passion for environmental responsibility.

Collaborating with Carbon Consulting Company (CCC), a company that consults on carbon foot-printing, life cycle assessment and energy management, HNB successfully utilised the latest carbon measurement and mitigation standards to measure the carbon footprint of the total production of the Annual Reports, and their impact from printing to disposal.

In determining the Green House Gas (GHG) inventory, CCC and HNB employed the latest Publically Available Specification (PAS) 2050 commissioned by the British Standards Institution. The final GHG figure approximated 6.58kgCO2e per copy, and equalled 95 tCO2e for a total of 17,000 printed copies.

“This equals to the GHG emission of a car travelling daily up and down from Colombo to Jaffna for three-and-a-half years,” HNB Managing Director and CEO Rajendra Theagarajah said, in attempting to illustrate the impact of the project. “In going for carbon neutrality, HNB has continued to demonstrate its clear commitment to corporate environmental leadership,” he added.

The bank’s Annual Report for the financial year 2010 comprised of a comprehensive Sustainability Report for the year. Sustainability reporting has been a core component of the bank’s reporting and disclosure process over the past five years. However, in 2010 the emphasis on Sustainability Reporting was upped with the bank seeking the validation of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) for its reporting process and contents. As such, the bank’s Annual Report for 2010 remains one of the few ‘GRI checked’ reports in Sri Lanka with a commendable rating of B+.