There’s an excellent article over at Motley Fool entitled Why You Shouldn’t Buy Green Financial Products. There have been a few of these recently: credit cards that give some proportion of their profit to green causes; mortgage companies that plant a few trees if you stick with them for several years; etc. The Fool goes into the maths a little bit, but it basically comes down to the fact that it is usually better to shop around for the cheapest product (credit card, mortgage or whatever), and give the resulting saving you’ve made to green causes.
They mention a credit card with a rewards scheme for money off with gas/electricity companies, and say that the same applies, but I think for ecotricity it is a bit different. This electricity company really does seem to be genuinely building out the UK’s wind farming capacity, and they aren’t particularly expensive. In fact, my monthly bill has gone down slightly since switching to them (but probably I’ve been watching my electricity usage more closely too).
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One response to “Green Financial Products”
I just found your note to the Motley Fool article. I think you point out the importance of companies which actually make a difference. What the Motley Fool article didn’t really emphasis sufficiently is that while the current offering of ‘green’ financial products is pretty poor, a product could be offered which does in his words ‘contribute efficiently to a cause’.
I agree about Ecotricity. Really it’s all about effort – how much effort is the service provider really going to make with their product. They have to go further than the extra mile to prove their worth. When a company does this, people SHOULD buy green financial products for their impact.
Henry