Sustainability at the Coin Conference

Last month, we reviewed the Coin Conference held in Amsterdam in October. Alongside the main programme was a seminar dedicated to sustainability. This heard from the Bank of Portugal, four mints (US, UK, Canada and Finland) and two suppliers, Artazn and Spaleck, on their environmental work.

Here we report on the Bank of Portugal, the US Mint, and draw specific environmental actions from the UK and Canadian mints (see CMN October for the Mint of Finland’s recent activities).

Portugal’s sustainability activities

The Bank of Portugal (BdP) is pursuing three streams of work – optimisation of the coin lifecycle, recycling materials and renewable energies.

Coin life cycle – the ECB requires euro coin processing through sampling. Since 2014 all coins lodged at the BdP are required to have already been checked for authenticity and fitness, using predefined packaging by those sending them in. As a result, the BdP only checks those coins on a sample basis.