Ethical principles can be applied to every part of your daily routine. You might, for example, buy unleaded fuel before visiting the Fair Trade shop, and recycle glass at a bottle bank on the way home.
Your personal finances are no different.
Green funds allow investors to back companies that use renewable energy sources, while some banks are now promoting ethical policies such as not lending to countries with corrupt governments. Britons invested more than £10bn ethically in 2005.
Nevertheless, while the green pound may have become a mighty force, consumers have been slow to get ethical in one particular area of their financial planning and that is mortgages. Ethical home loans currently represent a tiny fraction of the UK housing market, sold only in their thousands – so few as to be negligible, says the Council of Mortgage Lenders.
We seem to be much less concerned about whom we borrow from than who we give our money to, according to the Ethical Investment Research Service. With a large number ethical investment funds now available, many companies have the expertise to help you choose the fund that meets your own criteria wherever you live and whatever your needs – individual or organisational.