When it comes to sus­tain­abil­i­ty, Re­pub­lic Bank be­lieves too much talk has gone on with­out enough ac­tion to fol­low through.

As a re­sult, the bank has opt­ed to host a Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Ex­po in the next two weeks to prop­er­ly show­case var­i­ous av­enues to boost sus­tain­able prac­tices in the coun­try.

“The cre­ation of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty Ex­po re­al­ly ties back to how we start­ed our sus­tain­abil­i­ty jour­ney. We’ve al­ways been in­volved in sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the com­mu­ni­ties where we op­er­ate through our ‘Pow­er to Make a Dif­fer­ence’ so­cial in­vest­ment ini­tia­tive. How­ev­er, we’ve ramped this up. In 2020 we signed on to the prin­ci­ples for Re­spon­si­ble Bank­ing, as well as be­came a co-sig­na­to­ry to the Net Ze­ro Bank­ing Al­liance in sup­port of the 17 sus­tain­able de­vel­op­men­tal goals,” said Richard Sam­my, group vice pres­i­dent of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian at Re­pub­lic Bank’s Park Street of­fice last Thurs­day.

“We want­ed to move past all the talk shops and all of the con­fer­ences that dis­cuss sus­tain­abil­i­ty and re­al­ly move to ac­tion­ing that cat­a­lyst for change. Hence the theme Trans­form­ing Talk in­to Ac­tion,” said Sam­my about the event, which is the first of its kind to be host­ed in T&T.

He said in the process of putting to­geth­er the event, Re­pub­lic Bank’s in-house sus­tain­abil­i­ty of­fice sought out sev­er­al busi­ness­es across the coun­try that had em­barked on or pi­o­neered sus­tain­able prac­tices.

Sam­my ad­mit­ted the team was sur­prised by the num­ber of busi­ness­es that have adopt­ed such prac­tices, but felt these busi­ness­es had lim­it­ed ex­po­sure to make a wider im­pact.

“We want­ed to get to­geth­er with re­al busi­ness­es that are do­ing re­al prod­ucts and ser­vices in that sus­tain­abil­i­ty space, and re­al­ly cre­ate a plat­form for them to show­case their prod­ucts, their ser­vices, and not just among each oth­er, but al­so to the pub­lic. This is why it was very im­por­tant to us that the event be to­tal­ly free and open to the pub­lic, for the pub­lic to en­joy. Over 100 plus busi­ness­es span­ning from mi­cro, small medi­um en­ter­pris­es and cov­er­ing all as­pects of sev­er­al in­dus­tries in the coun­try,” said Sam­my.

He said the re­sponse from busi­ness­es has been over­whelm­ing.

“As a mat­ter of fact, we al­ways felt that there were a num­ber of com­pa­nies with­in T&T that were op­er­at­ing in the space, but we had no clue how many. And when we start­ed this, do­ing the re­search months and months ago, we re­alised that there were sev­er­al com­pa­nies span­ning all types of in­dus­tries.”

He said the team has re­alised that what these com­pa­nies were lack­ing was sim­ply co­or­di­na­tion, sup­port and a plat­form to show­case their work, their prod­ucts and their ser­vices.

This re­quired hav­ing a space in which they could feel com­fort­able to work and share. That meant that Re­pub­lic’s role was to bring the whole ecosys­tem to­geth­er with the bank pro­vid­ing the plat­form and fi­nanc­ing ad­vice to the prac­ti­tion­ers and to the gen­er­al pub­lic and to the pri­vate sec­tor and pub­lic sec­tor as well.

Sam­my high­light­ed the work of sev­er­al small com­pa­nies that ex­em­pli­fy the sus­tain­abil­i­ty path:

• Ecow­ash, a con­ser­va­tion car wash that is able to clean a ve­hi­cle us­ing on­ly two litres of wa­ter;

• Mi­la­gros So­lu­tions Ltd, a plas­tic bot­tle and cap man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny that turns plas­tics and plas­tic waste in­to reusable prod­ucts like plas­tic lum­ber;

• Car­ni­cy­cle, who have pi­o­neered the re­cy­cling of dis­card­ed cos­tumes as well as push­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices by pri­ori­tis­ing ed­u­ca­tion, waste man­age­ment and con­sult­ing along with sev­er­al com­pa­nies which he is hope­ful the pub­lic will get to know at the event.

To fur­ther in­crease the ex­po­sure of these busi­ness­es, en­try to the ex­po will be free to the pub­lic.

To make this event hap­pen, Re­pub­lic has part­nered with glob­al pay­ments so­lu­tion provider Visa to host the event. Sam­my ex­plained this de­ci­sion was made eas­i­er by Visa’s stance on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and its pre­vi­ous prac­tices to be­come a net ze­ro com­pa­ny as Re­pub­lic has plans to push this event be­yond T&T.

“We have re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers as well, Visa was an ide­al part­ner for quite a few rea­sons. Visa, of course, is one of the largest glob­al pay­ment providers. They have a very strong pres­ence and are com­mit­ted to the re­gion. But what we found re­al­ly, re­al­ly crit­i­cal was that Visa has been net neu­tral from a car­bon foot­print per­spec­tive, and al­so us­es 100 per cent re­new­able en­er­gy. And since 2020, they have re­al­ly been fo­cus­ing on not just sup­port­ing the growth of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty space, but al­so lead­ing by ex­am­ple. “

Re­pub­lic Bank has al­so been lead­ing by ex­am­ple with Sam­my de­tail­ing sev­er­al projects the bank has pushed in a bid to boost sus­tain­able prac­tices in the coun­try.

“We’ve had very, very strong ear­ly suc­cess­es. First­ly, we es­tab­lished a US$200 mil­lion cli­mate change fund. And to date, we’ve utilid­ed 75 per cent of that fund through­out the re­gion. And those funds have gone to­wards ma­rine fi­nanc­ing. They’ve gone to­wards so­lar project fi­nanc­ing, wind project fi­nanc­ing, elec­tric ve­hi­cle fi­nanc­ing, in some cas­es, dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion, fi­nanc­ing, strength­en­ing of in­fra­struc­ture and sev­er­al dif­fer­ent re­lat­ed cli­mate change projects.

“We al­so es­tab­lish a US$100 mil­lion sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture fund that’s avail­able to all Cari­com mem­ber states in an in an ef­fort to move to­wards re­duc­ing the Cari­com food im­port bill,” said Sam­my.

“At Re­pub­lic Bank, we’ve set re­al es­tate car­bon foot­print re­duc­tions, we’ve set pow­er sec­tor re­duc­tions. We’ve al­so es­tab­lished a for­mer ESG (en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­ern­ment) pol­i­cy, and we’ve set up so­cial and gov­er­nance goals to all tie in­to this sus­tain­abil­i­ty dri­ve.”

Among those ini­tia­tives in­clud­ed a part­ner­ship with Mar­vista In­sti­tute for Agri­cul­tur­al Train­ing and De­vel­op­ment to ed­u­cate lo­cal farm­ers about the im­pact of Cli­mate Change on their crops and liveli­hoods in var­i­ous farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties across T&T.

Amid re­cent dis­cus­sions about T&T’s tran­si­tion to a cash­less so­ci­ety, Sam­my con­firmed the Ex­po would al­so be used as an event to fur­ther ed­u­cate the pub­lic on the bank’s cash­less op­tions.

“Our think­ing is that it does not just of­fer a fast, ef­fi­cient way of buy­ing goods and ser­vices, but it al­so of­fers a more se­cure and a safer way as well. In­stead of hav­ing to car­ry around cash, be­ing able to just use your dig­i­tal wal­let, use dig­i­tal prod­ucts on­line in or­der to ac­cess cash, and prod­ucts and ser­vices load di­rect­ly from your ac­count. It’s seam­less, it’s eas­i­er, and as you say, it’s work­ing to­wards re­duc­ing (use of phys­i­cal) cash, but al­so cre­at­ing that move to­wards the net ze­ro bank­ing,” said Sam­my.

The ex­hi­bi­tion space is al­so set to in­clude Con­ver­sa­tion Café, where the vis­i­tors will wit­ness ex­pert talks and demon­stra­tions while gain­ing valu­able in­sight in­to top­ics such as re­new­able en­er­gy, in­clu­sive fi­nance, the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, and the in­te­gra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy in sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

The ex­po will be held at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya from Sep­tem­ber 13-14.