HSBC India Celebrates World Environment Day

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India , 2006-06-05

Employees at HSBC India today celebrated World Environment Day across the country. Some of the key initiatives undertaken included tree plantation drives, an exhibition of recycled paper products and quiz and drawing competitions for children with nature as the theme.

Malini Thadani, Head, Group Public Affairs at HSBC India said, “We aim to create environmental awareness amongst our employees, customers and local communities in the hope that they, too, will become active agents of nature conservation. Celebrating World Environment Day is in line with the HSBC Group’s commitment towards environment and education”.

In Mumbai, staff from the Andheri and Worli offices planted saplings in the office as well as residential complexes they live in. The HSBC Thane branch sponsored fencing of trees that had been affected by tarring of roads near Vasant Vihar and also put up an exhibition of recycled paper products in the branch. The Andheri branch invited local schools in the area to a lecture on nature conservation by noted wildlife conservationist Sunjoy Monga, while the Worli branch encouraged employees to walk from the station to the office to contribute their bit towards a pollution free environment.

In 2002, HSBC launched Investing in Nature, a USD50 million environmental initiative. By making the largest ever single donation to three charities, Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) and Earthwatch, the Investing in Nature programme aimed to breathe new life into the world’s major rivers, protect endangered species and fund conservation research and education around the world.

In October 2005, HSBC became the world’s first major bank to go ‘carbon neutral’. It reduced its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to zero by reducing energy use, buying green electricity and then offsetting the remaining CO2 emissions by investing in carbon projects. In 2005, HSBC was also ranked by the Carbon Disclosure Project among the top 60 companies globally in terms of climate leadership.

Notes to editors

1. HSBC in the Community

HSBC is involved in the community in each of the countries and territories where we operate through philanthropy and sponsorship. The Group focuses on education, and the environment and aims to concentrate at least 75 per cent of its funding in these two areas. HSBC has adopted two international codes of conduct for multinational companies--the United Nations Global Compact and the Global Sullivan Principles.

It is the world’s largest financial services group to secure a place in the FTSE4Good Index of socially responsible companies and has also been awarded a place in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World) that rates and monitors companies according to their economic, environment and social performance.

2. HSBC in India

The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited in India offers a full range of banking and financial services from its 44 branches in the 23 cities of Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi, Noida, Pune, Trivandrum, Thane, Vadodara, Visakhapatnam, Patna and Mysore, and some 150 ATMs across the country. HSBC has a credit card base of over one million customers in India and is one of the leading credit card merchant acquirers in the Indian credit cards industry.

3. The HSBC Group

The HSBC Group is one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world. The Group has over 9,500 offices in 76 countries and territories in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa, serves over 125 million customers and has assets of US$1,502 billion at 31 December 2005.



Contact

Malini Thadani, Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (HSBC), +91 (022) 22681046
[email protected]