I never thought I’d be wishing away the summer, but after this year’s heatwave I personally can’t wait for a chilly winter. Yes, I know, by late October I will have done a complete 180 and be missing the sun again, but these summer months have been borderline unbearable. I mean, who warned us? Oh yes that’s right, everyone. It seems like we have been sleepwalking into this environmental crisis for about 30 years – and has much changed? I guess we all have to suffer paper straws now, but what else? It feels to me as if the environment is the white hot elephant in the room that none of us really know how to approach, let alone go anyway to solving. And yet, persist we must as every year becomes more important than the last.
For individuals, there’s tons we can all be doing, but I think things like paper straws and personal carbon footprints have left a sour taste in people’s mouths. Did you know that the idea of the carbon footprint was actually popularised by none other than British Petroleum?
These underhand tactics shift the responsibility away from corporations and onto individuals, but I think people are waking up. With collective effort – driven by companies both big and small – we can make radical changes far quicker and more efficiently than leaving it up to individual people.
For my industry – equity release – the link to the environment may be a little less obvious than a BP or Shell. But any industry of any sort of scale has its role to play. For our team at Bower, we have been honoured and ever more motivated by our recent accreditation as a Mortgage Solutions Changemaker at the British Mortgage Awards, which celebrates companies and individuals who have committed to sustainability and environmental consciousness.
For Bower, committing to practical and effective change – such as carbon neutrality, which we will strive to achieve by 2030 – is the key to environmental progress. For myself, I often talk about the future of our industry and how we can help the next generation of retirees get the post-work life they deserve. Well, we need there to be a liveable world to make any of that work.
What’s more, the next generation of retirees will be the most environmentally conscious customer base we have ever had, and this will become ever more true as the younger people of today become the older people of tomorrow. So, it’s also just plain good business sense to align our goals and commitments with the mindset of our customers, especially if we can get a headstart now before today’s younger people get to old age.
Ultimately, the bottom line – both figuratively and in a business sense – is that saving the planet trumps all other concerns. I’m proud that Bower and other firms in our industry recognised by the Mortgage Solutions initiative, are taking this seriously, but we all know from this year’s summer that this matter is more than pressing and we all need to keep this topic firmly in the front of our minds.
