2009 Products or Services Award

One of Victoria’s rarest birds has a new lease on life, thanks to the work of credit union mecu Limited. The first credit union in the world to sign on to the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative, mecu Limited is on a mission to offset the carbon emitted as a result of its lending operations. Its GoGreen car loans offer a lower interest rate for greener vehicles, while home loans offer special repayment provisions for borrowers installing features such as rainwater tanks and solar panels. mecu Limited also recently bought a property in Victoria’s Wimmera region, containing prime conservation habitat for the South-Eastern Red-tailed Black Cockatoo, best known as the Commonwealth Games mascot, Karak. This 201-hectare piece of land allows mecu Limited to offer a Biodiversity Offset on home loans for new buildings: if any land is cleared for construction, mecu Limited re-plants an equivalent area.