Thinking Green

With debates on climate change and the race to save our planet raging on, it has become increasingly crucial for businesses to start thinking about climate risk and sustainable ways to power their operations. Enter Nedbank, your partner in financing sustainable business models

As sustainability morphs from a buzzword into a key focus worldwide, businesses are following suit. The need for sustainability has become increasingly urgent and many players in a broad range of industries are making a concerted effort to be kinder to the planet and forward thinking. Businesses need to being invested in what their future will look like and their role in building an environmentally sustainable future for generations to come.

Climate risk and sustainability have become critical pillars for many businesses around the globe, as industries wrestle with changing climate conditions, unreliable energy security, changing policy or legal frameworks and for South African companies, loadshedding.

The key to building this green future is financing and finding the right bank to help you transform your business into a more eco-friendly and self-sustaining model that considers the environment.

Nedbank, which is not only green in corporate colours, has been leading the charge in financing and assisting businesses to transition away from practices that undermine the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The bank offers a wide range of funding products to solve for the funding of many of the SDGs, including renewable energy, water, food production and waste recycling. These are solutions that can be tailored to individual business needs.

Some of the key areas in which banks assist include:

1Assisting businesses to transition away from practices that undermine their SDG goals. By internalising these lessons in their own banking operations, they can be proactive in creating sustainable solutions.

2By increasing efforts to reach the unbanked, creating green economies and financing sustainability technology- the finance sector can help eliminate poverty, create jobs, improve healthcare and promote equality.

3Commercial banks are also vital to financing the substantial investment required to attain SDG Goals. Banks fund specific projects and review the financial services they offer to assist clients in meeting their own consumers' expectations.

Some of the success stories that have come from Nedbank's green financing include:

1Funding solar equipment for a well-known ice cream manufacturer in Cape Town to help lower costs;

2Helping a mushroom farmer source equipment to keep temperature-controlled climates consistent in growing rooms;

3Assisting a fruit farmer in the Western Cape to lower electricity costs and emissions by installing solar panels;

The bank has also committed to the UN's SDG goals, including becoming 100% carbon neutral.

"The benefits of renewable energy or water efficiency mechanisms are obvious in this regard: not only do these innovations save precious resources, but they also reduce costs significantly, increasing a business's profitability," says Mark Boshoff, Head of Sustainability at Nedbank Business Banking.

Nedbank Commercial Banking enables our partners with the products and services they need to sustain their businesses in ways that are commercially sound, yet sustainable and supportive of the economy and the people who rely on it for their livelihoods.