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  Channel NewsAsia 24 Jul 07
HSBC sees strong response for Green Sale

Business Times 30 Jun 07
HSBC's annual sale goes green
By Arun John

New Paper 30 Jun 07
Shop & you'll help the rainforests
Feeling a bit guilty after indulging in the Great Singapore Sale? With the HSBC Green Sale, you'll get to shop and help local forests too.
By Teh Jen Lee

Feeling a bit guilty after indulging in the Great Singapore Sale?

With the HSBC Green Sale, you'll get to shop and help local forests too. The sale will include offers on credit cards, personal credit lines, life and travel insurance, as well as home and auto loans.

What's unique about the sale is that every time someone buys one of its products or services between 28 Jun and 28 Jul, HSBC will donate $2.80 towards a National Parks Board (NParks) study in the rainforests of Singapore. It will examine changes to the forests and their biodiversity in the past 10years, and help provide insights into the effects of climate change.

For every customer who enrols for Internet banking or e-statements, and for every Quickcash or online transaction, HSBC will pledge $0.28. The bank hopes the Green Sale will raise at least $50,000.

HSBC will be giving away a reusable Green Bag to customers for every product purchased. Proceeds from the sale of the bags will go to support the NParks study.

Members of the public who post a picture of themselves using the bag on HSBC's website between 12 Jul and 31Aug stand a chance to be one of three lucky people to win $2,800.

Said the bank's chief executive officer, Mr Guy Harvey-Samuel: 'Through the HSBC Green Sale we hope to engage our customers to join hands with us in conserving our environment and help raise awareness of important issues such as climate change.'

Business Times 30 Jun 07
HSBC's annual sale goes green
By Arun John

HSBC's annual banking sale is undergoing a 'green' transformation as part of the bank's global initiative to raise awareness on environmental conservation and climate change.

The HSBC Green Sale, the first of its kind in Singapore, is seen as a unique means of raising funds for local environmental research through the bank's annual financial sale.

The Green Sale, which started on June 28 and runs until July 28, is a pioneering initiative by the bank to engage the customer directly with local environmental issues. In addition to donating $2.80 for every new product or service sold during the promotional period, HSBC will also pledge 28 cents every time a customer enrols for Internet banking or carries out an online transaction in order to encourage customers to reduce the usage of paper in their everyday banking transactions.

Customers will also be able to purchase a reusable limited edition HSBC 'Green' bag, with proceeds going towards overall funds raised.

The bank's CEO, Guy Harvey-Samuel, believes that the Green Sale enables customers to receive more than just conventional value from sale products by helping them to invest in the future of the environment.

'It is in the interest of our customers and businesses like ourselves to do everything we can to help protect and conserve our environment, and we hope to raise, with the support of our customers, at least $50,000 for environment research,' Mr Harvey-Samuel said.

The HSBC Green Sale is part of the bank's US$100 million global programme called The Climate Partnership, which seeks to tackle climate change.

The Green Sale is in addition to local corporate responsibility programmes the bank has been using to increase environmental awareness among its staff and corporate clients.

'We designed the Green Sale to be a holistic customer-oriented initiative that engages our customers in our environmental conservation efforts, while augmenting our ongoing corporate responsibility programmes to generate greater awareness,' Mr Harvey-Samuel said.

Funds raised as part of the sale here will go towards supporting a local NParks eco-study on climate change in the nature reserves of Singapore.

Channel NewsAsia 24 Jul 07
HSBC sees strong response for Green Sale

SINGAPORE: HSBC says Singaporeans have responded strongly to the bank's recent initiative which raises money to fund climate change research in Singapore.

As part of its Green Sale, HSBC has for the past month donated S$2.80 for each financial product sold, and 28 cents for every customer who signs up for Internet banking - thus reducing their paper use.

Guy Harvey-Samuel, CEO, HSBC Singapore, said: "Every time a customers buys a number of different products from us, not only do they get a discount because it's in the Singapore sale time of the year, we also make a generous donation to a number of different climate change projects which are being conducted in Singapore at the moment.

"Certainly volumes going through the call centre and across our websites have increased by at least 50 per cent. We're tremendously encouraged by the reception that the HSBC Green Sale has received."

Since 1989, HSBC has been one of the most prominent advocates of environmentally-friendly projects here, and is responsible for sponsoring the hugely popular Treetop Walk in MacRitchie Reservoir.

The lender says financial targets are the least of its concerns when it comes to such activities.

"We don't do these projects because we think they're going to enhance our bottom-line. And its something that I don't actually measure... to be honest. We do them because they're the right thing to do.

"And as I say, how do we measure whether we have been successful or not, you can see we are because more people than ever before go to visit the HSBC Treetop Walk," said Harvey-Samuel.

"I go there quite a lot, and the number of people who go there on a Saturday morning are quite incredible. And we're looking forward to visitors going back to Pulau Ubin and to Chek Jawa now that it's open again... and more people going to the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve now that its summer."

Last year, HSBC was named the Financial Times' inaugural Sustainable Bank of the Year, after it became the first world bank to become carbon neutral.

But the lender says there is more work ahead. Harvey-Samuel said: "I think climate change and sustainability are the two most pressing issues that we, as a community in Singapore and across the world, have to actually face up to.

"And it's not only us who have to face up to it, but whatever we do will impact on our kids, our children, and our children's children. So whatever we can do to enhance the sustainability of global resources, whatever we can do to slow down and hopefully stop climate change, we have to do as a community together."

The Green Sale is part of HSBC's US$100 million global programme, called The Climate Partnership, set up to tackle climate change. - CNA/yy
links
Banking on green gesture?
Does generosity allow a bank - or any other institution - to then continue carrying on with business as usual? By Clare Davidson BBC 30 May 07

Related articles on Singapore: general environmental issues
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