Environmental policy and approach

BMO aims to be a leader amongst financial institutions in environmental sustainability, by understanding and addressing the environmental impacts of our own operational footprint. BMO’s environmental sustainability strategy, known as ECO⁵, guides how we reduce the environmental impact of our business operations.

Our approach to environmental stewardship

We take a risk-based approach in considering local and global environmental impacts when making business decisions and we focus on:

Decarbonizing our buildings to reduce our environmental impact
Measuring, reducing and publicly reporting our GHG emissions
Using resources wisely and managing waste efficiently by following circular economy principles
Supporting biodiversity conservation in our communities
Achieving cost reductions.

Our approach is guided by the BMO ECO⁵ strategy and framework:

Energy management and carbon neutrality: Maintaining carbon neutrality by using less energy to limit operational emissions, purchasing renewable energy certificates, and purchasing net-zero aligned carbon offsets.
Sustainable transport: Minimizing the environmental impacts of our business travel by including hybrid vehicles in our fleet and encouraging online collaboration, where appropriate, to limit air travel.
Sustainable materials: Using low-carbon building materials, making efficient use of building materials, and transitioning to carbon-positive materials in our construction projects. We source environmentally friendly cleaning products, and wood and paper products from sustainably managed forests, and we are working to reduce our paper use.
Waste management: Reducing the amount of waste we send to landfills. We are working with partners to divert waste and improve our recycling and reuse performance. We follow circular economy principles.
Sustainable procurement: Considering environmental and social factors when we make purchasing decisions.

These activities are continually revised to achieve greater environmental performance.

Environmental policy

As one of Canada’s largest banks, we’re committed to minimizing the impact of our operations on the environment and demonstrating leadership by integrating environmental considerations into all our business practices. Our environmental policy addresses the ways our actions affect the environment directly with our own operations, and indirectly through our purchasing decisions, the products and services we offer to our customers and the business opportunities we pursue.