Scotiabank Group Jamaica | Wealth | Business | Everyday Banking | Community | Youth

Scotiabank today unveiled a five pronged strategy to launch their Scotia Goes Green campaign. Just over $4,658,010 will be invested in projects that are focussed on recycling plastic bottles, reusing or the repurposing of newspaper and other paper products, the replanting of green areas in schools and coastal clean ups across the island. These initiatives that are all aimed at protecting and revitalising the environment will begin labour day 2010.

The Bank announced that it will be executing the green initiatives through the forging of formidable partnerships with Protect the Environment Trust (PET), The University of the West Indies Centre for Environmental Management and the National Youth Help Project.

On Labour Day 2010 over 660 Scotia Volunteers will be undertaking tree planting, the establishment of vegetable and flower gardens and other environment re-generation activities in schools, hospitals, children homes and community roundabouts. The tree planting element of the Scotiabank’s Going Green initiative is being supported by the Forestry Department in the Ministry of Agriculture, which will be providing seedling which the Bank will be distributing to environment clubs in primary schools. At the launch event, several school environmental clubs received seedlings from the Bank to be planted on Labour Day. The Scotia Volunteers will be partnering with the different environment clubs to maintain the green areas through periodic visits and work days. They will also be hosting ‘green seminars’ and making presentations to the students on understanding and caring for the plants under their watch. Following their Labour Day activities Scotia Volunteers will also be undertaking coastal clean up projects along with management of public green spaces in town centres.

The Second Phase of the Project will be executed on the UWI Mona campus where the Bank has funded the construction of five large skips which will store plastic bottles collected for recycling from various residential halls and other food areas on the Mona campus of UWI. The plastic bottles collected on campus are then sorted, cleaned and packaged by Protect the Environment Trust and then exported to the United States of America. Since the plastic bottle recycling project began on the UWI campus over 20,000 pounds of bottles have been collected and shipped. Joylene Griffiths Irving Director of Public Corporate said that the Bank was already engaged in various environmental initiatives in an unsystematic way but decided to focus its initiatives in a cohesive way. “Scotiabank is already known as a responsible corporate citizen and we have been involved in several green initiatives before. However, our decision to conceptualise and organise a structured going green initiatives is a natural step in the right direction. We are aware of the daily damage that we all inflict as humans on our environment through our everyday activities. We want to play an active part in helping to limit these effects and in some cases try to reverse what has already happen. We also want to take it further by educating and encouraging our customers, neighbour and the large community to get active in this regard.”

The Bank has also partnered with PET in the acquisition of garbage collection truck which also aids in the collection of plastic from other residential communities in Kingston and St. Andrew.

The third element of the programme which is being executed in partnership with the National Youth Help Project. This element will see the Bank supporting unattached youth from various communities in the development of a new environmental income generation enterprise. This which will see them collecting newspaper, used office paper and other paper products to be sold to a local cottage industry which will export them. The project which will be introduced in phases will begin in the parish of Kingston and St. Andrew with the main focus on businesses in the New Kingston and Downtown areas, after which a campaign will be launched for residential collection. Young men from various communities will be trained and employed to work as collection assistants and liaison officers.