HSBC Sets High Standards for Sustainability

HSBC's corporate sustainability initiatives include:

• Donating more than $50 million to environmental organizations from 2000-2005.
  
  
• Becoming the first major financial services company to become carbon neutral—meaning its worldwide operations contribute zero net carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.
  
  
• Investing $90 million to further reduce the environmental impacts of its operations by increasing energy and water efficiency, optimizing recycling and waste management strategies and reducing carbon emissions.

Last year, HSBC also announced a five-year, $100 million program to help reduce the impacts of climate change on the world's rivers, forests and cities. Climate change is believed to be the most significant environmental challenge of this century and will have a major impact on HSBC's employees, customers, shareholders and communities.

The HSBC Climate Partnership joins up four world-class environmental organizations — The Climate Group, Earthwatch Institute, World Wildlife Fund and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. For each of the partners, HSBC's contribution represents the largest-ever single corporate donation.

The HSBC Climate Partnership seeks to:

• Help protect four of the world's major rivers — the Amazon, Ganges, Thames and Yangtze — from the impact of climate change to benefit the 450 million people who rely on them.
  
  
• Make some of the world's great cities — Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York and Shanghai — cleaner and greener, and promote them as models for the world.
  
  
• Conduct the largest-ever field research experiment on the world's forests to measure carbon and the effects of climate change.

The most significant component of the HSBC Climate Partnership is the opportunity for employee involvement. With more than 300,000 employees in 82 countries, the commitment and active participation of HSBC employees in the program is essential to making a significant contribution to climate change.

"The HSBC Climate Partnership will achieve something profoundly important. By working with four of the world's most respected environmental organizations and creating a 'green taskforce' of thousands of HSBC employees worldwide, we believe we can tackle the causes and impacts of climate change," said HSBC Group Chairman Stephen Green. "Over the next five years, HSBC will make responding to climate change central to our business operations and at the heart of the way we work with our clients across the world."

In the United States, HSBC is coordinating local volunteering projects so that employees can make a direct impact on reducing the impacts of climate change. This will be in the form of internal projects involving colleagues and also local community projects. From there, employees can apply to become HSBC Climate Champions — employees who have demonstrated their dedication to taking action on climate change, and have committed to become leaders in HSBC's effort to address the causes and effects of climate change

At the end of 2007, HSBC Climate Champions from the United States and Canada participated in the inaugural field expeditions at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland. This location is one of five Regional Climate Centers around the world — along with the UK, Brazil, India and China — where approximately 3,000 HSBC employees will work alongside expert scientists to help research how forests are impacted by climate change. These employees will bring back valuable knowledge and experience to their workplace and communities.

"We learned so much about climate change and what we as individuals and a company can do to support reducing our CO2 footprint," said Bill Thomas, HSBC Climate Champion and Director of Business Systems for HSBC Technology and Services. "It's really amazing the amount of change and impact just one individual can make."

Learn more about the HSBC Climate Partnership.    

The pioneer group of HSBC Climate Champions worked alongside expert scientists to help research how forests are impacted by climate change. Pictured with Smithsonian Environmental Research Center's Dr. Geoffrey Parker (bottom row, third from right)  

HSBC Climate Champions Steve Dauenhauer, Bill Thomas and Nancy Starke help establish survey plots at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland. The survey plot will help scientists monitor changes to the forest over time.  

More than 300 HSBC executives helped remove invasive species from a marsh in Estero, Florida to provide opportunities for native species and the wetland to flourish.

HSBC Climate Champion Heidy Santizo verifies the coordinates of a survey plot at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland. The survey plot will help scientists monitor changes to the forest over time.