In the 20’s, the church preached disinvesting from `sin stocks’ -- alcohol, gambling and tobacco. Today, the definition of sin stocks has changed. More and more investors are veering towards Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), or investing on eco-friendly projects that give reasonably good returns...

Also called ethical investing, socially aware investing, or “green” investing, it indicates an attitude to investing that combines intentions to maximise returns and social and environmental good. More and more, investors are trying to align their investments with organisations based on their products and services, their environmental impact and policies, labour relations and human rights records, and community involvement.

Did You Know?

*The Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) approach encompasses an estimated $2.71 trillion out of $25.1 trillion in the U.S. investment marketplace today.

*From 2005 to 2007, social investing enjoyed a growth rate of 18-percent.

*Community investing is the fastest growing area of SRI.

*Institutional investors are the largest growing segment within SRI.

Using water as currency seems strange -- we all tend to take water for granted, don’t we? But did you know, it takes 22,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of beef? Scientists now believe that money shouldn’t be the only unit to calculate the cost of any given product with – we should also consider how much water was used up in their production.

Did You Know?

• The production of 1 kilogramme of rice requires 2300 litres of water
• One kilo of Maize requires 900 litres of water
• One kilo of Beef requires 22000 litres of water.
• One litre of Milk requires 800 litres of water.
• 140 litres of water are needed to produce 1 cup of coffee
• The water footprint of a product varies depending on where it is produced. Virtual water content of cotton will be 5,404 m3/ton if produced in China but 21,563 m3/ton if produced in India. The difference depends on the amount of rainfall, the water availability in the soil and the amount of water needed for irrigation.

Carbon credits have spurred a new generation of entrepreneurs selling clean technologies. One such innovator has created a stove that uses biomass briquettes (compacted crop waste) as fuel. His clean-burning stove not only reduces carbon emissions, it also effectively uses waste that would have required additional energy to dispose off.

For more, see

http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php/Biomass_Briquette_and_Their_Applications?utm_source=gk_hub&utm_medium==email&utm_campaign=invite and http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/greenfutures/articles/602276