Make My Money Matter has released a new film to highlight the connection between our retirement savings and deforestation.
The campaign also draws attention to the alarming lack of knowledge among pension savers about where their money is invested.
To expose the hidden truth about pensions, the group shipped a supersized delivery — a ‘Deforester 5000’ – across London to an unsuspecting pension bearer, demonstrating what their pension could truly be paying.
This follows Make My Money Matter’s investigation into the links between our pensions and deforestation, which found that for every £10 we put into our pensions, £2 is invested in companies with a high risk of deforestation.
The study also revealed that an estimated £300bn of UK pension money is related to the destructive practice, emphasising the crucial role that UK pensions must play in halting deforestation around the world.
The film also highlights the pensions industry’s lack of transparency and member engagement, with new polling revealing that over 90 per cent of UK pension holders are unable to confidently list the top companies in which their scheme is invested, and over 19 million saying they want more information from their providers about where their contributions are going.
Make My Money Matter hopes that this film will push all providers to take urgent action on deforestation, with some large pension funds, like Aviva and The Church of England, vowing to start removing deforestation from their assets.
Make My Money Matter co-founder Richard Curtis says: “Deforestation is a human problem with real, human impacts. That’s why we wanted to capture the human reaction when the painful truth of our pensions is delivered. Most important though, there’s also a human solution – for the industry to take urgent steps to cut deforestation from our pensions.
“Most UK savers are unaware that £300bn of our pension money is linked to deforestation – we hope this film helps show the public exactly what our money could be funding. We want to mobilise a generation of savers to realise the power of their pensions, and make sure our money is helping to protect nature, not destroy it.”