The Bank Indonesia (BI) office in Bali has come up with a novel – and appropriate – way to recycle end of life banknotes – by turning them into medals that were given to participants in the QRIS Summer Run Bali fun run.

Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions (KBBS) has published its Banconota Spring/Summer edition dedicated to one subject, sustainability. The focus of the piece is how KBBS is helping its customers reduce the environmental impact of what they do.

Reconnaissance, co-publisher of Currency News™, launched a new website on 22 April (World Mother Earth Day) as a cash community asset to capture and consolidate initiatives, work and research from every part of the cash cycle and provide tools to support organisations on their pathway to a greener future.

Mark Wind of the Dutch National Bank (DNB) reported on the sustainability work of the Joint European Tender (JET) group at the Intergraf Currency+Identity conference. This is a tangible banknote specific example of an approach to using procurement to drive change.

Biobanknote – the Colombian developer of solutions for composting banknotes and banknote waste – is planning to carry out a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to evaluate the manufacturing and use of banknotes compared with digital transactions, in accordance with the internationally recognised standards ISO 14067 and ISO 14040.

According to the Bank of Korea (BOK), last year it withdrew and disposed of 474.89 million damaged or contaminated banknotes, amounting to a total value of KRW 3.3761 trillion won, a 1.9% reduction over the previous year. The disposal of these notes is part of its ongoing efforts to maintain the integrity and quality of the currency in circulation, the central bank said. It also disposed of 101.53 million coins.

A new white paper examines the cash cycle from the perspective of every stakeholder, drawing on interviews and discussions with the 24 organisations that contributed to it. It contains examples and information from around the world, from small and large countries, emerging market and advanced economies and all types of stakeholder.

China Banknote Printing and Minting has been implementing a series of clean production and carbon reduction measures in the production of raw materials such as paper, thread, and ink, in order to make the production of the renminbi and other currencies more environmentally friendly.

The saying ‘made of money’ is often used as an idiom to describe wealthy people. In the case of De La Rue, its interpretation of the term under its new #madeofmoney campaign is literal – namely, consumer items that are made out of recycled polymer banknote waste.

Intergraf is best known in the banknote community for its biennial Currency+Identity conference and for its certification scheme for security printers. But it provides a range of services and tools for the broader print industry, two of which have relevance to banknote printers.