SCOTIABANK Jamaica is intent on promoting ‘green’ living, altering its own operations while encouraging its customers, and Jamaicans as a whole, to lead more ecologically friendly lives.

Recently, as part of its Scotia Goes Green campaign that was launched in May this year, — the bank undertook a variety of activities under the theme “Scotia Goes Green for Christmas”.

Chief among them was a competition among its branches for the one with the décor reflecting the green theme. At the same time, it produced a variety of items, including posters, Christmas cards, cloth bags and calendars — all of them promoting environmentally conscious living.

“Our 2011 Scotia Goes Green calendar is a statement to our stakeholders that we are taking a leading role in caring for the environment. Each month we draw your attention to an area of the environment which is threatened by prolonged actions of ignorance or neglect,” reads a section of the Calendar.

The subject matter explored include wetlands, water, trees, and climate change. The calendar goes further to providing readers with tips on what they can do while encouraging them to act.

“We applaud all Jamaicans who actively advocate for actions that preserve and protect our environment and we invite everyone to take action, no matter how small. Use less water, less electricity, plant a tree, or properly dispose of garbage — every action matters,” the calendar continues.

As for the Christmas card, a section of it reads: “We’re dreaming of a green Christmas, where oceans blue are sparkling bright, healthy reefs, where fish romp in delight; the future of our planet, growing bright”.

The posters and the cloth bags, for their part, encourage the three Rs: restore, reuse, and recycle, while the bank has changed the colour of its pens from red to green.

“We wanted to add another area of focus to our corporate social responsibility. Currently our major areas are health, education, community projects,” said Joylene Griffiths Irving, the bank’s director of public and corporate affairs, in commenting on why they had opted to start their ‘green’ campaign, which is to end in October 2011.

Meanwhile, as part of the campaign, Scotia has supported the Protect the Environment Trust and the University of the West Indies, Mona in their effort to recycle plastic bottles. The financial institution has also supported the National Youth Help Project in their recycling of paper.

And they are going one step further to launch an online competition to reward those who have started projects that help safeguard the environment. The competition, which will be launched next month, is open to schools, non-governmental organisations and community groups. Judging, according to Griffiths Irving, will be done “by votes on Facebook and a panel of judges comprising persons from Scotiabank, the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), environmental watch dog groups, and celebrities”.

“A total prize money of $4 million will be divided between the winners,” she noted.

Altogether, the campaign is costing the bank some $10.6 million.

“(That sum) covers the cost of receptacles, administrative cost such as stipend for youths collecting paper, the cost of trees from RADA, beach clean-up activities, creating green spaces, (and) prize money for winning projects,” said Griffiths Irving, who is also executive director of the ScotiaFoundation.