Demand ethical investments

One of the difficulties of trying to be a responsible person is that a lot of harm is done in your name indirectly. Investments are one example: the money you've innocently saved or plugged into a retirement fund could be contributing to rainforest destruction, pollution, oppressive regimes and other not-so-nice things. Friends of the Earth has a useful guide for making sure that your money isn't being used in an exploitative or damaging way: http://www.foe.co.uk/news/ethical_investment_index.html. There are suggestions for various people, whether you're a shareholder, pension holder or newbie to investing.


Effort involved: it depends on how dramatically you want to shape your investments. You could simply write a letter to the manager of your fund, or you could hire a financial advisor specializing in ethical investing to draw up a list of possibilities.