Jim Johnston does not toss water bottles in public parks. The director of environmental sustainability for Bank of Montreal doesn’t even use water bottles. That’s why his colleagues on the bank’s baseball team found it so funny when they caught him throwing an empty one that he had found on the field in the middle of a game this spring. (For the record, Johnston properly disposed of it after the game.)

The accountant by trade — he has been with BMO for 31 years — has learned quite a bit about the impact a large institution has on the environment since taking on his new role at the bank two years ago. And he understands the unique challenges, from a corporate point of view, of going green.

The bank’s formal environmental management system, designed for its office tower in downtown Toronto, has earned international certification that recognizes its environmental efforts. BMO focuses on five key areas: energy use, transportation habits, material consumption, waste management and procurement.

“We’ve spent a lot of time and effort getting to the point where we think we understand what our carbon footprint is,” says Johnston, “especially with respect to energy and transportation.”

To reduce energy use, BMO has converted many of its head-office tower’s washroom and conference-room lighting to motion-detection systems.

The bank also has conducted a waste audit and found that the waste diversion from landfill to recycling is about 70%. To improve this figure, it started green composting in February in all of its kitchen areas.

By establishing a baseline in 2007, the bank has been able to set targets and track its progress toward a more sustainable model. In 2008, for instance, it managed to reduce its transportation emissions by about 12%, Johnston says: “We went from 97 million kilometres travelled in 2007 to 85 million in 2008.”

He expects this figure to drop further this year, in what might well be the sole silver lining to this tough economy.

On the energy side, the bank has built several branches that comply with the green building rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. And BMO has committed to powering about 100 branches in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario with alternative energy. — W.C.