Last weeks Times money revealed that 98 per cent of products being advertised as green had some environmental failings, and that as a consumer you should examine where your money is going.

Here at CFS we work hard to offer customers transparency about which companies we fund, and promise not to lend to environmentally unfriendly organisations. For example The Co-operative Bank won’t finance any business whose core activity contributes to global climate change, via the extraction or production of fossil fuels.

We offer a variety of investment products and this year The Co-operative Investments launched the Sustainable Diversified and Sustainable World funds which invests in companies set to benefit from major trends such as climate change, the global ageing population and increased demand for healthcare.
As a pioneer in ethical and sustainable investment, it’s important that we sponsor events such as NEIW. And our message is simple - sustainable and ethical savings and investments allow our customers to have a positive impact on the environment and society, while still making as good a return as with other financial products.

For more information about National Ethical Investment Week, visit http://www.neiw.org/

We’ve recently had a variety of questions through the blog asking us questions ranging from, ‘How as a bank do we pursue our ethics policy with regard to banking itself?’ to ‘How as a business do we respond to humanitarian crisis?

Well back in September we published our most recent sustainability report, a “warts and all” look at The Co-operative Group, focusing on the social, ethical and environmental issues that are most material to the businesses and its stakeholders.

You can find out more about our social responsibility priorities ranging from Fairtrade support and animal welfare and more on our ecological sustainability priorities such as renewable energy generation and honeybee decline.

Do you have any questions yourself around any of these topics? Leave us a comment and tell us what you think or alternatively send us an email at: CFSgwmblog@cfs.coop

The second installment from Meera about her trip to Uganda, Meera tells us about her first week.  

“We were first staying in an area known as Jinja. On Monday morning, we left the campsite at 9am to travel about one hour’s distance away, to the small village of Kiresa, where we were going to be building the school.

That day the school held us a welcoming assembly where the children performed dances and speeches were made by the senior staff.

We were shown around the school and saw the building work that the local builders had only just started. We were told that after completing this new building, the school would reach the standards to become a government school, which would benefit both children and teachers in many ways.

For most of that week I had to lay bricks and do cement work, and the occasional digging, which was hard work! However all this was new to me and I really enjoyed it.

It wasn’t all hard work though and we had time to play games with the children, and even got the head teacher to join in with the egg and spoon race.”

Over thirty Santas dashed around Manchester City Centre yesterday in a bid to promote The Co-operative’s 5km fun run in aid of RNID. 

Dressed in full Santa costumes, employees from Group and CFS, delivered mince pies and hundreds of fliers on the streets of Manchester. We’ve had over 300 runners register for the event, taking place on Sunday 29 November, and we’re hoping to get hundreds more Santas to Sportcity -  home of Manchester City - for the 5km event.

You can join in the fun and find out more at www.co-operativesantadash.co.uk, or call 0161 703 5806 for further information.

Did you see our colleagues dashing round Manchester yesterday? Let us know if it sparked your interest and have registered as a result!

Yesterday, Monday 26 October, BBC One screened a programme about The Co-operative’s ethical campaigning focussing on our fight against toxic fuels. 

As you know from our blog the Beaver Lake Cree who live in Alberta, Canada have seen their traditional lands degraded by large scale deforestation and pollution arising from tar sands developments. Animals, fish, plants and medicines that sustain the Cree are being destroyed, so they have launched legal action against Canadian and Albertan governments to protect their environment and traditional way of life.

The film crew visited the tar sands extraction sites in Alberta on the recent press trip led by Colin Baines, our Campaigns Adviser here at The Co-operative Financial Services. During their visit they  flew over several of the tar sands extraction sites to see the massive environmental damage being done by these developments.

 If you missed the programme you can now what it on BBC iPlayer.

Don’t for get you can also Donate to the Beaver Lake Cree and support their battle against further tar sands developments.

Please also spread the word - tell your friends, family and colleagues about this issue and help them join our fight on Twitter and Facebook too. 

Post  your comments below and let us know what you think about the campaign and the programme.

Sunday the 8th of November sees the start of the second annual National Ethical Investment Week (NEIW), which Co-operative Financial Services is delighted to be sponsoring. The week is run to ensure everyone knows that they have green and ethical options when it comes to their finance and investment decisions.

As a business we have pioneered ethical banking with the bank’s unique, customer led Ethical Policy. We also offer a wide range of ethical products including charity credit cards, eco car insurance and sustainable investment products. So it’s only natural that we would want to sponsor NEIW.

During the week there will be various events taking place across the country and opportunities for charities, community groups and many other organisations to get involved. You can find out more on the new NEIW website and we’ll be keeping you up to date with what we’ll be doing in the run up to the week.

In the meantime let us know if you have any questions about NEIW, our Ethical Policies or any aspect of ethics and your money.

Did you know that In the UK, around one fifth of honeybee hives were lost in the winter of 2008/09. Bees pollinate a third of the food we eat, and this contributes £200million a year to the UK

Vanishing of the Bees, the latest film to be distributed by The Co-operative explores one of the biggest mysteries currently facing the natural world and examines the calamitous affect that the collapse of the bee population could have on our food supplies.

The film was premiered on 1 October and is now at cinemas around the UK, with a special screening being shown on Tuesday, 20 October that members can register for free tickets to.

To find out more, visit the Vanishing of the Bees website, where you can preview the film, read our blog and follow us on Twitter.

While you’re there don’t for get to sign our petition which calls on the UK Government to carry out a systematic review of the impact of pesticides on honeybees.

Our Financial Crime Management (FCM) team here at CFS are raising young people’s awareness of financial crime with the help of pupils at Reddish Vale Technology College, in Stockport.

We spoke to Gina Byn (Business Advisor) in the team to find out how:

“The idea of the scheme is to raise awareness of the dangers of fraud and financial crime in children between the ages of 11 to 16. We thought what better way to do this than get young people involved.

On Thursday 24th Sept we invited seven pupils from Reddish Vale Technology College, along with their teacher Phil Arnold, to come and visit us here at Pennylands to learn all about fraud.

As you can imagine we didn’t quite know what to expect so started with some basics around bank products and services, we were enlightened to the knowledge and awareness they had.

Next the children learnt everything they could fit in to one day from ATM fraud to phishing and scam emails, but importantly how to keep safe guarded against the increasing threats of identity theft and fraud.

The following day it was our turn to visit Reddish Vale to support the students with their challenge of creating lesson plans tailored to each year group.

In December the children along will a chosen teacher will pilot their lessons before it is finally cascaded to the rest of the school. We’ll keep you posted on their progress.”

The FCM team have also been busy organising events in preparation for National Identity Theft Awareness Week which kicks off on Monday, 12th October. It’s the UK’s only nationwide campaign designed to raise consumer and business awareness of identity theft and provide practical advice on how to take steps to protect your self against the risk of becoming a victim. Customer leaflets are available via our Branch Network and general advice is posted on our webpage.

Look out for future updates on these activities along with other involvement in the community coming soon.

On Saturday 5 December 2009, before the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, tens of thousands of people from all walks of life will flow through the streets of London for The Wave to demonstrate their support for a safe climate future for all.

The Wave will send a strong message to world leaders that a safe and fair deal must be agreed in order for dangerous levels of climate change to be avoided.

On the day, people taking part will be encouraged to wear blue clothing and bring blue fabric and banners to create a human wave.

Here at CFS we have a history of tackling big issues, and we get results. The Climate Change Act was introduced in 2008, after The Big Ask saw 22,000 of our customers and members contact their MP to demand a strong climate change bill.

To support The Wave we’ve teamed up with Oxfam and the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition to get as many of our members to join the procession and are providing subsidised transport to attend.

You can find out more about the march and our involvement on our website for The Wave. If you’re a member you can book your place now and anyone wanting to keep abreast of how the march is going can sign up for regular updates and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

So get involved in what ever way you can and help make this the biggest climate change march in history so the world leaders sit up and take notice.

We’ve been proudly embracing social media here at CFS, making good use of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other blogs to engage our employees, customers, members and anyone else who is interested in what we do.

Our most recent venture into Social Media came after we were voted Best Financial Service Provider by Which?. When we decided to produce a ‘Thank You’ song, sung by own very own CFS employees and post it on YouTube for all to see.

We can proudly say that the GWM blog is the first ethical blog of its kind created by a financial services provider. Our blog gives us a place to showcase all of the amazing things that we do and at the same time allows people to have their say.

We now have a Twitter page for the Blog and Our Press Team have also been tweeting away on their own Twitter page and have built up quite a following. We’ve also found Twitter to be really useful in pulling together all our online activity and invaluable in listening to what people are saying about us on-line.

Our employees also actively use Facebook with 3 official Facebook groups being set up, The CCC is a great place to work, The Mighty Co-operative Branch Network and My Direct Sales.  See our Press Release for more about our social media presence.

So why not engage with us online, follow us on Twitter, watch us on YouTube, join us on Facebook and tell us what you think here…