Environmental Sustainability Through Green Banking: A Study on Private and Public Sector Banks in India

Industrialization around the globe has triggered the pursuit of ever increasing needs and demands of the population and it has become symbolic of prosperity and development of an economy. But on the other hand it has resulted in the exploitation of the natural environment which in turn has disturbed the ecological balance. The disturbance in ecological balance has adversely impacted the human and its surrounding environment. The recent industrial disasters and natural disaster occur in the last three decades were directly or indirectly linked with the uneven industrialization. This in turn has raised an important issue of environmental protection among environmentalists, government and organization from all over the world. Environmental sustainability and sustainable development have become the important agenda in the international community. Various conferences and programs such as Earth Summit and United Nation Environmental program were being organized to create awareness about this alarming issue. Understanding the importance of the existence of human health & well being governments as well as the organizations started taking various initiatives for the concern of environmental protection and sustainability. Environmental sustainability plays a vital role in sustainable growth and development, as the integration of social, economical and environmental sustainability help to make the development sustainable. Environmental protection has become a part of strategy in most organizations in the developed countries and started offering environment friendly or green products and services to the consumers. Learning from their western counterparts, the Indian organizations have also adopted environmental friendly practices within the organization. But the concept of environmental sustainability and green products and services is new to developing country like India.The aim of this paper is to study the various ‘Green Banking’ approaches adopted by private and public sector banks in India for environmental sustainability. Further this paper attempts to categorize the phases of Green Marketing initiatives of the banks on the basis of their green banking initiatives. The sample consists of the top performing banks of the public sector and the private sector, using the case study approach. The findings reveal that with the time the Indian banking sector have understood the importance of environmental protection and started taking various initiatives under its green banking approach. The finding also shows that public sector banks have taken more green banking initiatives as compared to private sector banks with an exception of ICICI bank. Secondly it was analyzed under the Phases of Green Marketing (Peattie, 2001) most of the banks were categorized in the Environmental’ Green Marketing: The Second Age; and taking initiatives which are beneficial to the environment as well as organizations; only ICICI bank Green banking approach was found suitable to the third phase of green marketing- Towards the Third Age: Sustainable Green Marketing. Based on the findings of the study implications for further research endeavors is discussed.