Introduction to Sustainable Investing

If you are like a lot of people these days, you read the news and see a lot that needs fixing. You want to do your part to clean up the planet, promote fairness in the workplace and the market, and have a supply of natural resources that never gives out. At the same time, as an investor you want to earn a buck because you see no reason why these two objectives must conflict; in your mind, the two should go hand in hand. This is the world of sustainable investing—also called ESG, or environmental, social and governance investing. Sustainability is an approach to investing that has been around a long time in different forms, but has picked up speed and coherence in recent years. There is now a widening consensus that business not only has a stewardship responsibility, but that such responsibility is good for the bottom line.