Environment Monday - Why going cashless is good for the environment

In a hundred years, what sort of place will the London Borough of Barnet be, assuming there is still such a place? Will there be any green space left? Will there be any trees left with birds nesting? Will there be slow worms basking in the sun, frogs spawning in the ponds? Or will we hae concreted over the lot? This worries me, but there is more to protecting the environment than 'saving trees'. Our little corner of Barnet is part of a much bigger world. An interesting debate has been taking place on a Mill Hill Social Media site about a local cafe banning cash payment. It got me thinking about whether we as a society should be dumping cash completely as an unsustainable payment method.

Bluebells Cafe in Mill Hill Broadway have gone ‘cashless’ following repeated break ins. Do you think this is the way of the future or a failure of customer service? Let us know. Is cashless the way to go? pic.twitter.com/vSjXcJt4tL

— A Better Mill Hill (@ABetterMillHill) March 3, 2019

I'd never given it any thought before, but think of the environmental damage that cash is causing. I thought I'd make a short list.

1. Environmental Damage caused by mining of metals to make coins
2. Pollution caused by transporting the raw materials to make the coins
3. Pollution caused by taking notes/coins to banks and cash machines
4. Pollution caused taking notes/coins to banks from retailers
5. Pollution caused by disposing of notes (burning)
6. Pollution caused by smelting of metals and paper/plastic processing

I am sure if I thought about it, there would be more, but you get the idea. The Royal Mint explains the manufacturing process on their website.  With cashless payments, all of this disappears. In this day and age is it really responsible to expend all of this energy. As a society, I passionately believe we should look at all of the daily routines of how we do things and see if they can be made more sustainable. The less business has to manufacture and move products, the less harm we cause the environment. I daresay that some will say that there is an environmental cost with credit cards, smart phones etc. This is of course true, but a single card can replace hundreds if not thousands of coins and notes. As for mobile phones, we'd have these regardless of whether we had cash.

One of the arguments against what the Mill Hill Cafe is doing is that not everyone has a bank card in the UK that can be used for card transactions. For instance people on benefits use the POCA scheme which does not have the option to pay for goods by card. This has a couple of million users. I would suggest that this should be extended to allow point of sale transactions. The old chestnut that is rolled out when this debate is had is that it would discriminate against old people. If banks had to, by law, supply a card option, then there would be no social exclusion for those that don't have accounts. Card have been around since 1968, it is not new fangled technology. Furthermore, from a safety perspective, surely when elderly people have large amounts of cash, they are far more at risk than if they have a card account. If we became a cashless society, there would be an audit trail for all transactions and ultimately it becomes easier to find thieves if what they've stolen has gone into a bank account with an audit trail. Of course there is card based fraud as well, and I believe banks could do far more, but I believe a cashless society would make a difference for the environment and send a message that we take these matters seriously and are thinking about them.