Nat West Knocking Farmers

[willyorkshire]

NatWest combs customer accounts – and tells them to go vegetarian​

Bank says feature is designed to ‘empower customers to understand their carbon impact’

ByNoah Eastwood, MONEY REPORTER and James Fitzgerald, SENIOR MONEY REPORTER2 November 2023 • 4:50pm

NatWest is telling customers to stop eating meat and to drive electric cars after combing their accounts to calculate their carbon footprint.
A “Carbon Footprint Tracker” on the bank’s mobile app uses the transaction data of customers and makes recommendations on how to reduce the amount of carbon production their shopping supports.
The bank has told customers to consider mending their clothing as opposed to going to high-street shops to buy new outfits, as well as stopping drinking dairy milk in favour of plant-based alternatives.
It is also suggested that customers switch off tumble dryers, share car journeys, repair broken electronic devices themselves and wash their clothes in cold water.
Under the spending section of the bank’s app customers can switch between “my spending” and “my footprint”. Customers are told the impact of typical purchases.
In one example seen by this newspaper the app says: “If you spend £15 on a dress at a high-street shop, that could equate to a footprint of 16kg CO2.” Customers are also told how to cut their footprint, such as by buying clothes second hand.

Other recommendations tell customers to “save the planet” by turning off their central heating and taking fewer short-haul flights.
NatWest also outlines a number of ways customers may change their diets to become more eco-friendly, such as going vegetarian and partly vegan as well as cutting out beef and trying “meat-free Mondays”.
The bank’s app asks its users to try adding tofu and lentils to their diets as substitutes for eating meat.
Other lifestyle changes recommended by the bank include buying used furniture and renting or buying second-hand clothes.
Customers are given personalised carbon footprint scores in kilograms of CO2, released per month based on their spending habits, as part of its “ambition to be a leading bank in addressing the climate crisis”.
A message on the app reads: “The UK’s average monthly carbon footprint is approximately 1,000kgs [of CO2]. To help reduce the impact of climate change, scientists recommend that by 2030 we should aim for our carbon footprints to be around 180kgs”.
The suggested changes are categorised under different areas of spending, such as transport, groceries, bills and shopping and each comes with its own personalised carbon footprint rating based on how the customer has spent their money that month.
The interactive page on the NatWest app invites users who opt in to press a “start today” button for each recommendation, which is then added to a list of eco-friendly lifestyle changes that the customer has made.
It comes as the bank, which is backed by British taxpayers, is rocked by the Nigel Farage debanking scandal in which NatWest-owned Coutts bank attempted to close the prominent politician’s account after judging he held “xenophobic, chauvinistic and racist views”.
The bank has also been a prominent supporter of causes such as transgender rights and offers staff who identify neither male nor female double-sided lanyards to alternate between different gender identities.
One customer, 76-year-old Faith Scott from Surrey, said she felt the bank’s carbon footprint calculator was an “intrusion” into her life and said the bank should prioritise “looking after our money not our morals”.
“We don’t need all this preaching to us. I don’t take flights hither and dither. I grow my own vegetables and make my own food,” she said.
“Most people of our generation lived with hardship [so] we didn’t waste things.”
She added: “What gives the bank the authority to dictate its principles to clients, particularly when it is supported by taxpayers?”
NatWest’s carbon footprint calculator was developed by Cogo, a New Zealand-based tech firm, which offers retail banks a “personal carbon manager” for customers, according to the company’s site.

NatWest backed a number of progressive causes under former chief executive Alison Rose CREDIT: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg
Dame Alison Rose, former chief executive of NatWest is quoted as saying that the feature would “empower our customers to understand their carbon impact” on the Cogo website.
Santander also uses the Cogo carbon tracking software. TSB also trialled the carbon tracker feature, but dropped it in July.
NatWest first trialled using the feature with around 500 customers in 2020. It is now live across devices which have the latest version of the NatWest app installed. It has more than 300,000 active users, according to the bank’s annual report.
The estimated footprint of purchases is calculated from the overall value of a transaction, as opposed to the individual contents of a shop.
A NatWest spokesman said: “Customers tell us they want to take action to live more sustainably, and to save money at the same time on things like energy bills, but they don’t always know where to begin. The Carbon Footprint Tracker is an opt-in feature in our app that helps customers to see the carbon impact of their spending, at an aggregated level, and provides tips and suggestions to reduce this and to help them to save money too”.
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[Paddington]

I changed my mobile phone number, took two weeks of emails, phone calls and several bits of paper from NatWest to set up an online account (which I never use) to register the change. Bought something online the other day and NatWest are still showing my old phone number, now at least five years out of date for a one time passcode.

 

[topground]

Nat West carbon footprint calculator App will no doubt feed the information gathered about customer spending habits back into a central data base.
That data gathered will then be sold on to those seeking to market their products to an identified customer base.
The formation you hold about you has a value be that personal or business, do not share it for free.
‘Don’t tell him Pike!’

 

[DrWazzock]

That’s Natwest that is now 40% owned by the taxpayer as a result of managing its own business so badly that it needed a government buyout.

 

[Wolds Beef]

@Horn&corn I meant the guy in charge of the agricultural arm!! Not Branson.!! Could not care less about him.!!

 

[Ffermer Bach]

If anyone wishes to write to their CEO of retail banking to show their displeasure, I have found this email address. I intend to write later today.

 

[Paddington]

Perhaps these money saving ideas could have come from the top, instead of Alison Rose getting a multi million pound golden handshake, give her some M&S vouchers and a clock from Argos.

 

[DaveGrohl]

The direction of travel has been clear and obvious for a long time now. I don’t know why people keep using the word conspiracy. For it to be a conspiracy it’s got to be hidden hasn’t it?

WTF has any of this got to do with a bank? I doubt the public take as much notice of this sort of finger wagging as we imagine they do. Most seem to be getting sick to the back teeth of it.

 

[DrWazzock]

All just part of the big elite club that makes a good living by robbing us.

 

[Fiacre]

I’ve been banking with NatWest for a number of years with many accounts.

But now I’m genuinely worried about being de-banked as I’ve discovered my business has been deeply involved with another firm facilitating in the criminal activity of money laundering on an industrial scale. They were even fined £258,000,000.

The company? NatWest, less than two years ago. It might be time for me to ‘engage’ with them to let them know what I think of this cynical initiative to harvest and then commercialise their customers personal data.

 

[DrWazzock]

My wife has been spending a lot of money lately as she might not live that long. We’ve been to the kind of places the “rich” eat and stay at : the kind of places with whopping great carbon footprints that think that if you reuse your hotel towel we will stop global warming. When you see the kind of artificial world they live in, the distance they put between themselves and reality, and the kind of self affirming rubbish they spout, you can understand where all this nonsense at the top of corporate business comes from.

 

[DrWazzock]

And down here on the ground, after the wettest autumn I’ve ever known, it looks to me like grass fed livestock is probably the safest way forward environmentally without having to resort to the kind of taxpayer funded cover crop and direct drilling acrobatics that would have failed to get anything drilled at all here.

 

[delilah]

I get your point, the problem is that they are essentially implementing a de facto social credit system. Eat meat? Well only this option is available, drink milk? Life just became more expensive, drive a ICE car? Sorry no bank account.

It’s all very well agreeing with it because you accept we need to reduce C emissions. Thing is, one day soon they’ll make a decision you don’t agree with or that doesn’t suit you and it’ll be too late for you to do anything about.

This is an anti authoritarian argument not an anti CC one.

You clearly don't get my point. I'm not agreeing with it, i'm pointing out that it's difficult to oppose it all the time our publicity material is sending the same message.

Wider point: Now that there is a dawning recognition on here that this is as much about control as it is about livestock, the farmers are putting themselves the same side of the fence as the lentil knitters. They have been warning on corporate control for decades, and for decades farmers have ridiculed them.

 

[Swarfmonkey]

the farmers are putting themselves the same side of the fence as the lentil knitters

Really? The idea that the enemy of my enemy is automatically my friend is overly simplistic. There's as many lentil knitters as there are corporate types that would screw farmers over in a nanosecond if they got the chance.

 

[toquark]

You clearly don't get my point. I'm not agreeing with it, i'm pointing out that it's difficult to oppose it all the time our publicity material is sending the same message.

Wider point: Now that there is a dawning recognition on here that this is as much about control as it is about livestock, the farmers are putting themselves the same side of the fence as the lentil knitters. They have been warning on corporate control for decades, and for decades farmers have ridiculed them.

The same lentil knitters who opposed my neighbours dairy expansion? Or the ones who opposed (unbelievably) a tree planting scheme on a nearby estate? Or the same ones who are campaigning against a pylon exporting wind energy. Or the same ones who have infested every community council, environmental agency and land owning charity to push their insane narratives?

You can delude yourself all you like, but from my experience the vast majority of these people are fundamentally not just anti business and anti farming, but they’re anti human. They are member of an extintionist cult who see us as a scourge on the planet.

 

[DaveGrohl]

My wife has been spending a lot of money lately as she might not live that long. We’ve been to the kind of places the “rich” eat and stay at : the kind of places with whopping great carbon footprints that think that if you reuse your hotel towel we will stop global warming. When you see the kind of artificial world they live in, the distance they put between themselves and reality, and the kind of self affirming rubbish they spout, you can understand where all this nonsense at the top of corporate business comes from.

To us, all of this is clear deckchair fiddling, but most policymakers aren’t even aware they’re scratting around on a ship’s deck, arguing about what colour the deckchairs should be.

On your point, we were in a hotel last week. Just in that one place the bulls**t that was evident was absurd. One example; they had triple bins everywhere, marvellous signs about caring for the planet and the hotel doing their bit for recycling. There was one for plastic, one for paper and one for general waste. I watched them go round with the trolley late in the day. All 3 bins went into the same sack.

There’s a world where policymakers and CEOs think everyone’s buying into this stuff and then there’s the real world.

 

[Martin Holden]

Since when did banks start to advise their customers about how they should run their business? So long as the business is viable and the bank makes money from them, they need to re define their priorities.

 

[Still Farming]

Mate just logged into his Natwest Account and page came up warning him to stop eating meat and buy second hand clothes???
WTF.
FFS.
What are the Unions doing about this????

 

[FonterraFarmer]

Quite right too. Livestock agriculture contributes 7% of total UK GHG emissions. Cutting meat and dairy is one of the most effective ways of reducing your environmental impact. Well done Nat West.

Agreed, but the likes of New Zealand can produce most dairy and meat products with significantly lower carbon footprint/environmental impact, so thanks for your endorsement.

 

[Tarw Coch]

@C.J don't be angry. They are your words, not mine ( I assume you pay levy ? )

https://weeatbalanced.com/sustainability/

I must have missed the post where CJ said that, could you quite the thread title and post number?

Your point that if we pay levy means we must agree with everything AHDB say is a bit like saying anyone who pays tax agrees with everything the government spend the money on…………..your point is entirely ridiculous………..although we do get a vote every 5 years on the government