The Virtual Forest is a £112,500 co-sponsorship of Trees for Cities, an independent charity that works with local communities on tree planting projects, community education and training initiatives in urban areas.

All first direct customers and HSBC customers who have registered for Personal Internet Banking can elect to stop receiving their monthly current account statements through the post. HSBC customers can also turn off their quarterly savings account and twice-yearly mortgage account statements and view them online instead.

Every time a customer switches off paper, HSBC and first direct will plant one tree in the online Virtual Forest. For every 20 virtual trees, Trees for Cities will plant one real tree in locations in London, Leeds, Manchester, Bristol or the Midlands. The programme will plant up to 22,500 trees in total.

The bank says more than one million customers have already stopped receiving statements and are saving more than 13 million pieces of paper and about seven million envelopes each year.

Joe Garner, general manager of personal financial services, for HSBC and first direct said: "We have been offering customers the opportunity to turn off their paper statements for three years. This year we are increasing our drive to cut down on paper use through programmes such as Trees for Cities and other initiatives, such as a 50p donation to the WWF for the first 100,000 customers who registered for HSBC internet banking during our HSBC Green Sale in January."