The Mint of Finland (MOF) recently presented at the High Security Print™ conference in Tallinn on sustainability and its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. MOF is 100% government owned, exporting more than 90% (99% in 2021) of all it produces. It operates out of two sites, Halsbrücke in Germany, which is a coin blank manufacturing unit for plated steel and solid metal blanks, and its Vantaa site in Finland which is its coin minting facility.
MOF’s CSR activities are structured around four pillars – labour, the environment, governance, and human rights and fair play. It publishes an annual CSR report.
For its environmental work MOF has a framework of accreditations that set guidelines and goals for continuous improvement. These are the ISO14001 environmental management system, ISO50001 energy management system, ISO26000 recommendations, and Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations Global Compact.
MOF has targets relating to three key areas and its performance against each is reviewed monthly. It is working to reduce its CO2 emissions, to enhance recycling to reduce waste sent to landfill or burnt for energy and to use raw materials responsibly.
In 2021 MOF reduced its total CO2 generation by MOF operations and internal logistics by 78% from 4,123 tons to 901 tons. The share of renewable energy at its Vantaa site reached 100% in 2021 and it has increased the share of renewable energy at Halsbrücke from 7.9% to 70.4% by changing the source of electrical energy to 100% waterpower. The Vantaa energy comes from wind power and district heating that uses 100% renewable bio-energy.
Transporting materials between MOF’s two sites has been an area of focus. Starting in 2021, MOF has moved from road to rail transportation, leading to a 30% reduction of related CO2 emissions. It has worked closely with the logistics companies to streamline these internal logistics.
Investment in its blank manufacturing processes has led to a reduction in energy consumption. Investments included a new process water cooling system and a new cooling system of rectifiers in the plating process.
MOF has worked on the basics of recycling, analysis of waste types and the definition of improved waste sorting as part of its work to increase the share of recyclable waste. This has led to the separation of specific, recyclable plastic film by introducing separate collectors, and through employee training. The result, based on product mix, is that 2-4 tonnes per year of waste are now able to be recycled rather than being burnt for energy.
Another initiative has been the introduction of specific containers that can be reused between the blank factory and the mint.
This has avoided the need for disposable packaging (steel drums and plastic bags) and related waste, as well as efficency improvements for the logistics team because they no longer need to transfer blanks into mint boxes.
The presentation listed real life challenges faced by MOF in their sustainability work. First it is hard to make year-on-year comparisons because the product mix has a significant impact on what is measured. Second a mint is not a high volume user within the metals industry. As a result it has little negotiating power when it wants to avoid non-recyclable materials or use renewable energy sources.
Not all suppliers measure their environmental impact. For example, metal suppliers are rarely equipped to provide the CO2 footprint of their products. The MOF aims to use European supply chain governance rules to motivate its suppliers to increase transparency and related reporting.
Tenders are a challenge. While improvements in environmental footprint can and may result in better cost efficiency, this isn’t always true. Given that ‘the lowest bidder’ wins rule in most public tenders, this can create a conflict with environmental targets. For example, renewable energy is often more expensive than energy from non-renewable sources and organisations that set targets, monitor consumption and implement corrective actions need more resources than those that don’t. Whether customers are willing to pay more for more environmentally friendly options remains to be seen.
The presentation ended with some thoughtful suggestions. It argues that to succeed, the entire value chain must participate in the challenge to improve environmental impact and suggests procurement can be used to drive more sustainable thinking and action. MOF suggested:
Governmental buyers could adopt concrete sustainability requirements in their tender requirements covering the whole supply chain, not just the minting process.
The tender evaluation criteria should place more weight on the environmental impact and move away from ‘the lowest bidder wins’ method. This would reward environmentally friendlier options.
Buying entities should allow and encourage bidders to submit alternative offers to improve environmental impacts. For example, using renewable energy in the production process, offering more efficient delivery plans to reduce the amount of transportation and packing materials and, when relevant, moving to re-usable canvas bags instead of plastic bags to reduce waste.
This presentation was full of detail and a demonstration of a structured and systematic programme of sustainability and CSR activity.
