HANNA ZIADY: Why ethical investing is a wise course of action
We are so easily caught out. Ask anyone if they support child labour, hazardous working conditions and paltry pay and you’ll mostly be met with an emphatic no. Ask the same person if they shop at [insert name of high-street fashion retailer] and they’ll most likely respond yes, oblivious to whether that company pays its Asian garment workers a living wage or rigorously checks the ages and working conditions of those workers. I uneasily include myself in this no-longer-so-hypothetical example. And that’s despite so-called ethical consumerism — think back to the seminal anti-sweatshop campaigns against Nike in the 1990s — having come a very long way. Ethical or responsible investing, on the other hand — the consideration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors when investing in listed companies — has lagged far behind. ESG factors could include anything from climate change, waste, pollution and resource depletion to working conditions, employee relations, executive pay, ...
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