The Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR) aims to simplify the rating of companies with truly sustainable business practices. This in turn will encourage trust in ethical investments by the 44% who are still sceptical that so-called ethical, sustainable businesses really do make a difference.
Norway’s national pension fund has sold off Euro 1.8 bn in tobacco shares, citing ethical reasons. The individual investor can also opt for ethical investments, with over 100 ethical funds now available.
An innovative font system from the Netherlands now enables computer users to print sustainably and lessen their environmental impact by cutting their consumption of ink and toner by up to 25%.
Reduced ink consumption can also result in significant financial savings, with Ecofont’s manufacturer, the Dutch marketing firm Spranq, claiming that a company with 5,000 employees could save over £100,000 a year on its printing costs.
With an increasing volume of information and advice from HMRC now being offered not face to face, but by telephone, the onus is on the caller to record in writing the tax advice they are given, if they wish to depend on that advice at a later date.
In such situations, problems arise when a taxpayer acts (or refrains from acting) based on undocumented telephone advice, or on their recollection of what HMRC said, according to the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group (LITRG).
The critics say that ethical funds are not transparent enough to convince investors they are genuinely green, or that the screening process limits the number of companies available to ethical fund managers, and therefore hampers their ability to maximise returns.
The Chancellor has announced in his pre-budget report an additional £400m in funding for low-carbon growth initiatives and carbon reduction initiatives at domestic level.
This brings to over £15bn the amount of private and public investment in the low-carbon and renewable energy sectors over the next three years.
An ethical tax designed to raise up to 20 billion euros a year could be the key to funding renewable energy projects in the world’s poorer regions, according to proposals by the French delegation to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next week.
The French concept of a ‘justice-climate’ plan could be funded by a tax on financial transactions, similar to that once proposed by the Nobel prizewinning economist James Tobin.
The government has promised a new personal tax to help the environment, in the week when Copenhagen gears up for its international conference on climate change. The new ‘eco-tax’ would aim to vastly reduce the amount of plastic in circulation, by imposing a charge on the use of plastic carrier bags in shops and supermarkets. Despite [...]
Don’t knock ‘eco gestures’ – on the long journey toward practical solutions on climate change we need to begin with small steps in our daily lives. Starting with small steps by changing attitudes to climate change, we will get there.
