Case Studies

HSBC in the UK has launched the 'virtual forest', a nearly US$200,000 partnership with Trees for Cities. This will provide an on-line, interactive, visual representation for HSBC’s paper reduction schemes. Every time a customer requests not to receive paper statements, a virtual tree will be planted in the virtual forest. Each contribution can be customised with names and messages and viewed on the website.

For every 20 trees planted in the virtual forest, HSBC will plant a real tree through Trees for Cities in one of five locations – Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, London and the Midlands. HSBC in the UK has pledged to plant up to 20,000 real trees in 2007.

To read more about the Virtual Forest, click here.

The virtual forest is one of several paper-reduction schemes that HSBC in the UK has undertaken. HSBC customers in the UK have reached a major milestone, turning off paper statements for over one million current accounts, savings accounts and mortgages. HSBC Private Bank in the UK has stopped sending paper copies of personal financial summaries. Overall, these schemes have already resulted in 24,000 trees being planted in the UK to recognise this cost and paper saving.

In a similar scheme, Hang Seng Bank, a principal member of the HSBC Group, planted 10,000 trees in Hong Kong in January 2006 to encourage shareholders and customers to receive electronic instead of paper communications.

In addition, Hang Seng Bank pledged to plant one tree for every 10 Hang Seng Personal e-banking customers who switched to the e-statement service and one tree for every shareholder who chose to receive annual information (such as annual and interim reports, and notices of meetings) by electronic means.

More than 100,000 account holders have chosen to use the Hang Seng e-statement service since its launch in February 2005, which saves about 5 million sheets of paper per year. An additional 10,000 trees were planted in Ma On Shan Country Park in April 2006.