NatWest is telling customers to stop eating meat and to drive electric cars after analysing their accounts to calculate their carbon footprint. A “Carbon Footprint Tracker” on the bank’s mobile app collates data of purchases made by its customers to make suggestions on how to be more green and reduce carbon production.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Ian Magness

From the Telegraph:

NatWest is telling customers to stop eating meat and to drive electric cars after combing their accounts to calculate their carbon footprint.

A “Carbon Footprint Tracker” on the bank’s mobile app uses the transaction data of customers and makes recommendations on how to reduce the amount of carbon production their shopping supports.

The bank has told customers to consider mending their clothing as opposed to going to high-street shops to buy new outfits, as well as stopping drinking dairy milk in favour of plant-based alternatives.

It is also suggested that customers switch off tumble dryers, share car journeys, repair broken electronic devices themselves and wash their clothes in cold water.

Under the spending section of the bank’s app customers can switch between “my spending” and “my footprint”. Customers are told the impact of typical purchases.

In one example seen by this newspaper the app says: “If you spend £15 on a dress at a high-street shop, that could equate to a footprint of 16kg CO2.” Customers are also told how to cut their footprint, such as by buying clothes second hand.

Other recommendations tell customers to “save the planet” by turning off their central heating and taking fewer short-haul flights.

NatWest also outlines a number of ways customers may change their diets to become more eco-friendly, such as going vegetarian and partly vegan as well as cutting out beef and trying “meat-free Mondays”.

The bank’s app asks its users to try adding tofu and lentils to their diets as substitutes for eating meat.

Other lifestyle changes recommended by the bank include buying used furniture and renting or buying second-hand clothes.

Customers are given personalised carbon footprint scores in kilograms of CO2, released per month based on their spending habits, as part of its “ambition to be a leading bank in addressing the climate crisis”.

A message on the app reads: “The UK’s average monthly carbon footprint is approximately 1,000kgs [of CO2]. To help reduce the impact of climate change, scientists recommend that by 2030 we should aim for our carbon footprints to be around 180kgs”.

The suggested changes are categorised under different areas of spending, such as transport, groceries, bills and shopping and each comes with its own personalised carbon footprint rating based on how the customer has spent their money that month.

The interactive page on the NatWest app invites users who opt in to press a “start today” button for each recommendation, which is then added to a list of eco-friendly lifestyle changes that the customer has made.

It comes as the bank, which is backed by British taxpayers, is rocked by the Nigel Farage debanking scandal in which NatWest-owned Coutts bank attempted to close the prominent politician’s account after judging he held “xenophobic, chauvinistic and racist views”.

The bank has also been a prominent supporter of causes such as transgender rights and offers staff who identify neither male nor female double-sided lanyards to alternate between different gender identities.

One customer, 76-year-old Faith Scott from Surrey, said she felt the bank’s carbon footprint calculator was an “intrusion” into her life and said the bank should prioritise “looking after our money not our morals”.

“We don’t need all this preaching to us. I don’t take flights hither and dither. I grow my own vegetables and make my own food,” she said.

“Most people of our generation lived with hardship [so] we didn’t waste things.”

She added: “What gives the bank the authority to dictate its principles to clients, particularly when it is supported by taxpayers?”

NatWest’s carbon footprint calculator was developed by Cogo, a New Zealand-based tech firm, which offers retail banks a “personal carbon manager” for customers, according to the company’s site.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/banking/natwest-combs-customer-accounts-tells-them-go-vegan/

As one commenter put it, this is deeply sinister.

Just the fact that they are monitoring what we are spending our money on is bad enough.