Happy Belated Earth Day!  Yes, I know Earth Day was yesterday...hence the belated...but tell the truth did you remember to celebrate?  How do you celebrate the Earth?  Do you hug a tree, have a neighborhood shredding day, start a compost or just pledge to be more aware?  Well whatever you did to mark the day...hats off to you. 

Because now...today...I think we can all say officially that Earth Day, after nearly 40 years, is a real honest to goodness recognized event.  Which is a good thing because it shows that while we may be slow learners, humans do eventually catch on.  And if humans can catch on so can the organizations and businesses we create.

I had a brief internal debate about which new green story I wanted to comment on because there is just so much to say about all the businesses that are "going green".  From BNY Mellon's new solar powered office in Massachusetts to Microsoft's green data center initiatives to Citi's new platinum accreditation award from the US Green Building Council, banks are leading the charge to green and it's not only the big boys having an impact.  Smaller banks and financial services companies are seeing the opportunity and pulling their customers right along with them. 

Just one day past Earth Day, e3bank announced their intention to be the first to create a commercially successful, full-service financial institution built from the ground up around principles of sustainability.  Which means a bank with no branches but a whole lot of technology.  A while back, I wrote a blog on my other site about social media and its potential to move businesses beyond even email to communicate and collaborate with customers.  After reading e3bank's strategy, it seems  they are thinking along similar lines to boost collaboration between bankers and customers, since they will mostly engage with their customers via technology.  

So yes, everyone in banking really is getting on the green "wagon" and through simple sleight-of-hand, getting even the most "non-green, anti-environmentalist, eco-hater Scrooge-like" character to change their habits.  Who knows one day, we may all be singing reduce, reuse and recycle. (click on the previous link if you didn't know that Reduce, Reuse, Recycle was a song).  You gotta love it.