Money

Visual abstract for the finance chapter.

The Convergence of Money: One Wallet to Rule Shopping, Saving, and Investing

This chapter explores how money could incorporate sustainability as a feature.

“Money is information… it shouldn’t be more expensive or slower than sending an email.” (K. Käärmann, Co-Founder of the Wise , formerly known as Transferwise, money transfer platform), said in 2018 (Käärmann, 2018)

Money itself is changing and the meaning of money is becoming more diverse. Traditionally, money referred to the fiat money created by governments by law, using central banks, which loan money to commercial banks, that in turn make it available to the society. Now, we also have new types of money created by companies and individuals using blockchain-cryptography based distributed databases, which keep track of transactions (who-paid-whom). We have various types of tokens of value, such as cryptocurrencies, digital assets, loyalty points, etc, which can all function as types of money. Whatever the method of creation, in essence, money is a system of trust where something is used as a medium of value exchange and accepted by other people as payment.

Spurred by Fintech: The Democratization of Finance: A Precursor for Sustainable Superapps

Digital money in it’s various forms connects industries on popular financial mobile apps, which makes digital money more accessible and socially engaging, appealing to people who are active online. Because of the democratization of finance enabled by digitization and financial technologies*,* the journey from consumer to investor is becoming increasingly simple*.* Consumer-oriented financial apps increasingly enable new user interactions which blur boundaries between shopping, saving, and investing - termed here “money convergence”. Empowering consumers to access finance through digital technologies and delivering a simple user experience is the fintech trend of the last decade. Motivated by boosting user numbers, apps such as N26 and Revolut, that started out with only payments-focused businesses, founded in 2013 and 2015, respectively, began making efforts to expand into all-in-one financial superapps offering varied saving and investing services (“Kickstart Your Investment Journey,” 2023; “Revolut Launches ETF Trading Platform in Europe,” 2023).

While it took N26 and Revolut more than a decade to grow into a global business, fintechs can growth really fast. Just last year in Canada, Neo Financial, which offers a mobile app and credit cards to consumers featuring cashback rewards on payments, savings and investing, won Canada’s fastest growing company award in 2024, posting a 3-year revenue growth of 38,431% earning between $75M and $100M USD in annual revenue from 1.3 million customers (“Ranking Canada’s Top Growing Companies of 2024,” 2024). (Qorus, 2023) a survey of 200 banking executives worldwide, revaled we’re in a digital banking revolution, with growing adoption of personalization, automation, and embedded finance - the availability of savings, loans, insurance, debit cards, and investment opportunities embedded within the apps of non-financial platforms, like e-commerce or social media platforms.

Financial Literacy and Education: Young Investors Follow Financial Influencers

Young investors are typically retail investors investing small amounts of money for themselves. (Unless they have inherited wealth or are among the very few who work in an institution such as an investment firm, university endowment, pension fund or mutual fund, and have a say in where to invest large amounts of other peoples’ money.) Retail investors face many challenges in comparison with their institutional counterparts. For instance, they may have much less time to do proper research, face information asymmetries, where finding good information is limited by time, ability, as well as financial literacy, whereas professional investors have the tools, skills, time, and knowledge, to make better investment decisions.

The common expectation is that young investors typically have less understanding financial concepts. While consumers are beginning to become more money-savvy, they still lag in both financial and sustainability literacy. Financial and sustainability literacy are intertwined. Integrating these literacies is essential, because a financially informed public is better equipped to channel capital toward environmentally beneficial uses. Media plays a significant role here, with retail investing being heavily influenced by social media influencers.

Popular financial blogger (Austin Ryder, 2020) believes a good starting point is ask the user to define their habits: are you consumer or investor? This helps users recognize whether their spending habits define them primarily as consumers or as investors. (SmartWealth, 2021) urges readers to “consume knowledge, not products”; for financial health one should get rid of debt, automate tracking of expenses and savings, and create a pathway for income to flow into investments; consumer mindset is the main obstacle that keeps people from financial independence and investing. (lizlivingblue, n.d.) promotes the IMPACT investing app by Interactive Brokers which is a mobile trading platform focused on socially conscious investors interested in sustainability (Trahant, 2022).

Comparative data compiled from [@trahantInteractiveBrokersBuilt2022; @gyuriczkiRevolutESGInvesting2025; @interactivebrokersCommissionsStockAsiaPacific2025; @lightyearFeesTaxes2025; @revolutRevolutsTradingFees2025; @revolutRevolutExplainsFractional2020; @interactivebrokersIMPACTFeatures2025]

Feature	IMPACT by Interactive Brokers	Lightyear	Revolut
Target Audience	Sustainability-focused investors; value-driven alignment	European retail investors	Everyday users with casual interest in investing
Investment Products	Stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, options, bonds, fractional shares	Stocks, ETFs, multi-currency accounts	US & EU stocks, crypto, commodities, fractional shares
Sustainability Focus	Strong. Core to the app. Lets users filter companies by ESG values and track portfolio impact.	None. Focuses on transparency and low fees	Minimal. Some ESG ETFs; no impact tracking or custom filters
Fees	Very low (starting at $0 commissions, with some market/data fees)	Low, with no account fee; FX markup 0.35% outside base currency	Free plan has high spreads; paid tiers offer lower fees; several FX and withdrawal limits apply
Currency Conversion (FX)	Interbank FX rates; low spreads	0.35% FX fee	Free plan: 1% FX fee; better rates in Premium accounts
Fractional Shares	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tax Documents	Yes, detailed reports	Yes, supports Estonian tax system	Limited; may need to do manual tracking for taxes
Mobile App Experience	Professional, ESG-focused UI	Clean, simple, intuitive	Gamified, casual, integrated with other Revolut services
Extra Features	Voting rights, ethical filters, carbon impact metrics	Interest on cash (like a bank account); multi-currency accounts	Cashback, budgeting, crypto, P2P payments, travel perks

The next step is to provide frictionless digital pathways that let everyday purchases morph into micro-investments with transparent sustainability impacts. This user journey is a type of blended learning-by-doing experience. Framing the problem as a dual journey: first, helping users recognise whether their spending habits define them primarily as consumers or as investors, then giving users exposure to investment opportunities through familiar activities like shopping may hold the potential to boost financial literacy levels, enticing consumers to learn more about taking advantage of their financial opportunities as well as understanding how to manage the types or risk involved. Indeed, retail investor are the most vulnerable to misinformation and speculative hype if educational scaffolding is absent.

Financial superapps for shopping, saving, and investing are converging on digital platforms, aiming to permeate our daily financial lives, with features such banking, payments, transfers, rewards and cashback programs (e.g. Rakuten), automated micro-investing round-up to next dollar (e.g. Acorn, Stash, Swedbank, many others), retail investing (Robinhood, Public, Lightyear), copy-trading (eToro) and offering various investment vehicles, to name just a few: (fractional shares of) stocks, derivatives like CFDs and futures, microloans (Kiva), commodities and precious metals such as gold and silver (Revolut), physical assets such as real estate, land, forest and digital assets such as cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and many other alternative assets of varied price, volatility, liquidity, and risk profile.

Community-based copy-trading apps live on the intersection of social media and investing, enabling financial inclusion through letting novice, inexperienced investors piggy-back on more sophisticated investors by copying their investments. In some ways community-investing competes with robo-advisors as communities can be led by professional investors and followed by less sophisticated investors. Because of this investing leadership aspect, investor communities can have the type of social proof, which robo-advisor do not possess. eToro’s, Robinhood’s and Dub’s copy trade feature turn portfolios, watch-lists and trade votes into public content (dub, 2025). The visible social proof approach can feel safer than robo-adviser; retail investors cite seeing what others do an important trust trigger (Andraszewicz et al., 2023).

Evidence of a similar phenomenon of peer behavior measurably shifting sustainability choices has been documented in the entreprise sector in green financing of Chinese industries, albeit in a modest 1–2% increase (incremental nudges); companies tend to invest green when they see when other companies signal a green preference (Yang et al., 2022). In a Swedish study, investors’ belief in sustainable investing was found to be affected by other investors: an online coordination game with 559 private investors showed that 2nd-order pro-sustainable beliefs (what one thinks others care about) also drove up sustainable asset allocations, underlining the social dimension of ESG investing (Luz et al., 2024).

Indepedent of what is the technology used, access to investing is about financial empowerment. Ugandan investor John Ssenkeezi celebrated on X (formerly know as Twitter) being able to vote at Apple’s 2022 AGM stockholder meeting using stock investments app Chipper Cash, which allows users by fractional‑shares, illustrating shareholder democracy for emerging‑market users (John Ssenkeezi, 2022). AngelList was an early pioneer in opening startup deal flow to retail users, offering access once reserved for angel investors and VCs. Similarly, community-based investment clubs could potentially enable everyday investors to pool resources and back sustainability initiatives alongside more experienced professionals.

Build a community can be lucrative. In Singapore, Chinese influencer Yuqing “Irene” Zhao’s photos generated S$7.5 million in 10 days as NFT sales; she tokenized her selfies as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) via IreneDAO, a decentralized version of OnlyFans, Discord, Twitch and Patreon, arguing that Web3 empowers creators to earn directly from their communities, turning fans into investors and aligning content creation with tokenized membership rights — evidence that retail capital can flow directly to media personalities through crypto communities (Irene Zhao, 2022; Yuqing Zhao, 2021). Similarly, in South Korea, media personalities have become “investable,” through more traditional financial vehicles, such as K-pop idols as the focus for “thematic” ETFs, including KPOP and Korean Entertainment ETF and the Mirae Asset Global X K-pop and Culture ETF, enabling fans and investors to financially participate in the growth of the Korean entertainment and celebrity-driven cultural capital (Darwyne, 2025).

Building a community is a way to design a context, where the culture creates certain expectations of behavior. Humans working together are able to achieve more than single individuals. “Any community on the internet should be able to come together, with capital, and work towards any shared vision. […] In the long term this moves to internet communities taking on societal endeavors.” (Panzarino, 2020).

• Building a culture of sustainability? (Armstrong & Staff, 2021) believes everaging different personalities and viewpoints can build more sustainable cultures. The focus on group consciousness suggests community-based sustainability action may be effective. What are the building blocks of a thriving community? Experience instead of read.

• Communities can be directed towards sustainability. Started in Estonia, the World Cleanup Day movement has attracted tens of millions of people to do beach and forest cleanups, all over the world.

• Zero Waste Lifestyle is the opposite of overconsumption. Zero Waste suggests people buy in bulk for more savings and to reduce packaging. Through group purchases and community investing while also reducing consumption. Zero Waste municipality in Treviso is a whole region with a focus on living green.

Minimalism is a movement of people living a simpler life; this probably is always going to be a small percentage of people. According to one study, consumers choose to engage in becoming minimalist in a non-linear process with overlapping stages (Oliveira De Mendonça et al., 2021). Yet, (Costa, 2018) Finnish socialists promote minimalism as part of their mainstream policies. In Tokyo, a YouTuber shares their life and the choices they made (Tokyo Simple Eco Life, 2021).

New Rules of Money: Legislative Efforts Empowering Consumers to Deploy Capital in Sustainability

Regardless if it’s money spent on shopping or money saved and invested, these are all consumers’ financial decisions of capital allocation. In one way or another, people are giving their money to companies. The critical question is: do people choose to support sustainability-focused companies - companies which invest deeply into green innovation and eco-friendly practices - or do people choose companies that pay less attention to sustainability? While all financial transactions support economic growth in the sense of being reflected in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), not all money flows equally support sustainable economic growth.

Legislation is catching up with fintechs and setting higher standards for consumer protection. For example the Directive 14 2014/65/EU, 2014 of The European Union fully recognizes the changing financial landscape trending towards the democratization of investments: “more investors have become active in the financial markets and are offered an even more complex wide-ranging set of services and instruments” (European Parliament, 2014). Some key legislation for investors has been put in place recently, for example “MiFID II is a legislative framework instituted by the European Union (EU) to regulate financial markets in the bloc and improve protections for investors” (Kenton, 2020). MiFID II and MiFIR will ensure fairer, safer and more efficient markets and facilitate greater transparency for all participants” (European Securities and Markets Authority, 2017).

(PWC, 2020) Changes to laws and regulations aimed at achieving climate change mitigation is a key driver behind the wave of ESG adoption. The goal of these laws, first adopted in the European Union, a self-proclaimed leader in eco-friendliness, is to pressure unsustainable companies to change towards greener practices, in fear of losing their access to future capital, and to create a mechanism forcing entire environmentally non-compliant business sectors to innovate towards sustainability unless they want to suffer from financial penalties. On the flip side of this stick and carrot fiscal strategy, ESG-compliant companies will have incentives to access to cheaper capital and larger investor demand from ESG-friendly investors.

Already in 2001, while still part of the EU, the UK government was discussing ways to promote sustainable investment “fundamental changes in VAT or corporation taxes could be used to promote greener consumption and investment” (House of Commons, 2002). More recently, (HM Treasury, 2020) released a taxonomy of sustainable activities in the UK.

While the above trend is for governments to adapt to and work towards their environmental climate commitments and public demand, the sovereign risk remains an issue. For example, in the U.S. the policies supported by President Donald Trump during his presidency ran counter to many sustainability recommendations, including those directed at the financial markets, helping legacy industries stay competitive for longer through subsidies, and lack of regulation, or even regulation supporting legacy technologies (Quinson, 2020).

Governments are powerful in passing legislation, with a strong positive or negative ESG impact, and people do have a voice. Among the many grassroots campaigns, one environmental success story is about success story, asking that EU shops can’t sell deforestation products, gathering over 100 thousand online signatures (WeMove Europe, 2022). Subsequently, legislation banning products contributing to deforestation was passed by the EU Parliament and Council in 2023 and came into effect in July 2024 (Abnett & Abnett, 2024; European Parliament, 2023).

• In the social sector of ESG, there are also stories worth sharing. For example, during COVID-19, financial advisor Malaika Maphalala co-led the “Invest in Black Economic Liberation” calling for racial justice investing to direct flows into sustainable funds (naturalinvest, 2020).

ESG Crisis and Opportunity

Opaque Metrics and Lack of Standardisation

ESG ratings have faced criticism for lack of standards and failing to account for the comprehensive impact a company is having. (Foley et al., 2024) notes how Coca Cola fails to account the supply chain water usage when reporting becoming “water neutral” and calls on companies to release more detailed information; major ESG ratings omit 90% of the company’s water footprint.

(Gemma Woodward, 2022) Identifies fundamental problems in current ESG frameworks include inconsistent data and superficial rating schemes, and calls for a complete overhaul to restore credibility in sustainable investing. ESG Needs Standardisation of Methodologies. “Disparity between ESG methodologies was one of the key hurdles to finding the right sustainable strategy” (Margaryta Kirakosian & Angus Foote, 2022). This is supported by econometric analysis showing how inconsistent ESG scoring methodologies and greenwashing risk can predict the yields of green bonds, meaning scoring variance could materially affect bond pricing (Baldi & Pandimiglio, 2022).

There are those rebuffing misleading claims made by asset managers. Prominent investment research firm Morningstar conducted a forensic analysis of the industry, and re-classified 1/5 of the tracked funds (over 1200 in total) or over $1 trillion USD in total valuation, as non-ESG; Hortense Bioy, Morningstar’s Head of Sustainability Research, commented these funds don’t integrate ESG factors “in a determinative way for their investment selection” (Schwartzkopff & Kishan, 2022).

In theory, Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) integrates ESG criteria to screen out harmful industries and direct capital to companies with positive social and environmental impacts for both ethical and financial returns (“Socially Responsible Investing Advisors,” n.d.). Nonetheless, a large-scale input–output life-cycle assessment of 1340 European equity funds (11275 unique holdings) including sustainable (SRI) funds, and found that 24% of the sampled SRI funds actually show higher total CO2 emissions exposure within their assets than a conventional market index (Popescu et al., 2023). (Amenc et al., 2023) reviewed ESG ratings from 3 major providers (Moody’s Analytics, MSCI Inc., and Refinitiv), finding that “well-rated companies do not emit significantly less carbon than those with lower scores”.

(“ESG 浪潮反思：一間減碳表現優異、但產品有害健康的企業，符合 ESG 精神嗎？,” 2022) critiques leading ESG rating methodologies (e.g., MSCI, Sustainalytics), showing they assess a company’s ability to withstand ESG-related financial risk (not its actual environmental, social, or governance performance), allowing firms like Philip Morris, which joined the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) in 2020 despite selling 7 trillion cigarettes per year, to score highly, and calls for urgent re-calibration of these frameworks.

The lack of rigor is creating a backlash against ESG reporting. (Yu, 2021) reports ESG is filled with greenwashing. (“Anti-ESG Crusade in US Sweeps 15 States With More Laws in Works,” 2023) several US states are introducing regulation for ESG to curb greenwashing. (Frances Schwartzkopff, 2022a) suggests the ESMA and EU has strengthened legislation to counter ESG greenwashing. (Shashwat Mohanty, 2022) “sustainable funds don’t buy Zomato’s ESG narrative”. (Bindman et al., 2024) reports large ESG funds managed by BlackRock and Vanguard are investing into JBS, a meat-packing company which is linked to deforestation of the Amazon rainforest through it’s supply chain.

(Sanjai Bhagat, 2022) argues that despite more than $2.7 trillion in ESG-rated AUM as of December 2021, (assets under management, the total market value of all the investments including stocks, bonds, crypto, etc.), that investment managers are looking after on behalf of their clients (81% in Europe and 13% in U.S.), funds marketed as ‘sustainable’ fail to deliver improvements to environmental and social metrics; the inconvenient truth is that ESG ratings don’t deliver better ESG performance. In the face a crisis of underperformance and mounting scandals, (James Phillipps, 2022) questions whether ESG is fundamentally broken or simply misunderstood. (PIETRO CECERE, 2023) calls ESG labeling confusing and arbitrary; fund selectors describe ESG labeling as “a total mess,” pointing to confusing definitions, inconsistent methodologies, and overlapping ratings that undermine clarity. (“Financial Materiality Marks Next Big ESG Investing Battle,” 2023) argues that the main challenge in credible ESG investing is defining which sustainability factors are genuinely financially material; the market is confused by inconsistent scoring methods and needs more government-backed policies that create incentives to align short- and long-term risk assessments. ESG-activist Georgia Elliott-Smith argues in her TEDx talk that large corporations are using ESG for greenwashing - but not changing their fundamental polluting practices (TEDx Talks, 2022).

ESG gave banks a new tool to market and sell environmentally conscious opportunities to institutional investors, for example: universities. A case in point being the partnership between HSBC and the University of Edinburgh (Reid, 2020). Some banks even use tactics such as co-branding with famous individuals. One of the largest private banks in Switzerland, Lombard Odier & Co (LOIM), launched a thematic bio-economy fund marketed using the words of The Prince of Wales, “Building a sustainable future is, in fact, the growth story of our time” (Kirakosian, Noveber 16, 2020). Investment can also be advertised in media publications. In the United Emirates, the richest oil-drilling region in the world, Mubadala, on of the state-owned sovereign wealth funds of the government of Abu Dhabi with $326 billion AUM, has taken out sponsored content in Bloomberg to market their national ESG vision and regulatory strategies to accelerate ESG investment growth toward net-zero goals, including many green energy projects; the Abu Dhabi funds together manage $1.7 trillion AUM (Maccioni, 2025; “The Future of ESG Investing,” n.d.).

Yet, the question remains, whether one can trust financial professional to hold ESG to a high standard. (Agnew, 2022) Argues that ESG has become a diluted corporate marketing label nearing the end of its usefulness, and urges a pivot toward more substantive responsible-investment practices beyond ticking the ESG checkbox. Banks are hiding emissions related to capital markets, which is a major financing source for oil and gas projects; the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) working group voted to attribute only 33% of CO2 emissions from bond and equity underwriting to their own financed-emissions footprints, effectively excluding and hiding 2/3 of their carbon emissions (Wilkes, 2023). In the U.S., Blackrock, the largest private investment fund in the world with $10T USD under management, released guidance reflecting their plans to shift their investments to vehicles that are measured on ESG performance; however they later backtracked from their decision (Posner, 2024). In the U.K., while promising to become sustainable, oil companies are increasing production; Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the UK at the time announced 100 new licenses for oil drilling (Noor, 2023). In a sense this strategy could be described as “have your cake and eat it too”, with investing going to all types of energy, regardless of its environmental footprint.

In early 2025, ESG investing saw $8.6 billion in global outflows, mainly due to political pushback in the U.S., including rollbacks of climate and DEI policies under the Trump administration. U.S. sustainable funds lost $6.1 billion, and Europe saw its first net outflow since 2018; ESG is shifting toward a more practical phase, with less focus on branding and more on measurable outcomes (Bioy, 2025; Johnson, 2025; Mitchell, 2025; Vosburg & Bioy, 2025).

Modern Slavery Persists and ESG Falls Short in Protecting Workers’ Rights and Mitigating Environmental Harm

In 2023, an estimated 50 million people were in slavery around the world; lack of supply chain visibility hides forced labor and exploitation of undocumented migrants in agricultural work; 71% of enslaved people are estimated to be women. (Borrelli et al., 2023; Kunz et al., 2023). (Christ & V Helliar, 2021) estimates 20 million people are ‘stuck inside corporate blockchains’. The Global Slavery Index measures the considerable ‘import risk’ of having slavery inside its imports (Walk Free, 2023). (Hans van Leeuwen, 2023) slavery affects industries from fashion to technology, including sustainability enablers such as solar panels. The Internaional Labor Organization (ILO) estimates 236 billion USD are generated in illegal profits from forced labor (International Labour Organization, 2024). On the global level, the United Nations SDG target 8.7 targets to eliminate all forms of slavery by 2025 however progress has been slow (The Minderoo Foundation & Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, 2020).

The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act which came into effect in 2012 applies to large retailers and manufacturers focused on pushing companies to to eradicate human trafficking and slavery in their supply chains. Similarly, the German Supply Chain Act (Gesetz über die unternehmerischen Sorgfaltspflichten zur Vermeidung von Menschenrechtsverletzungen in Lieferketten) enacted in 2021 requires companies to monitor violations in their supply chains (Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung, 2023; Stretton, 2022).

The Modern Slavery Act has been passed in several countries starting with the U.K. in 2015, yet commodification of human beings is still practiced worldwide (UK Parliament, 2024). (Mai et al., 2023) finds the quality of the reporting remains low among FTSE 100 (index of highly capitalized listings on the London Stock Exchange) companies. Not everyone is in favor of more stringent labor practices either. Voters in Switzerland rejected the responsible business initiative in 2020 while the country is a global hub for trading commodities. “Switzerland has a hand in over 50% of the global trade in coffee and vegetable oils like palm oil as well as 35% of the global volume of cocoa, according to government estimates” (Anand Chandrasekhar & Andreas Gefe, 2021) begging the question can Swiss traders have more scrutiny over what they trade.

Slavery is connected to environmental degradation, and climate change (Decker Sparks et al., 2021). Enslaved people are used in environmental crimes such as 40% of deforestation globally. Cobalt used in technological products is in risk of being produced under forced labor in the D.R. Congo (Sovacool, 2021). In India and Pakistan, forced labor in brick kiln farms is possible to capture remotely from satellite images (Boyd et al., 2018). In effect, the need for cheap labor turns slavery into a subsidy keeping prices lower, and environmental degradation happening.

While reducing slavery in the supply chain sets very low bar for ESG, another aspect of supply tracing is the treatment of workers and working conditions. Currently, one of the largest factory compliance platforms - Fair Factories Clearinghouse (FFC) - covers 149 countries with standardised auditing in the apparel and consumer goods industries, monitoring over 40 thousand workplaces and facilitating over 100 thousand workplace assessments by its members (“FFC - Fair Factories ClearingHouse - Compliance Solutions,” n.d.). At a similar scale, Sedex spans 170 countries (Novotny, 2025). Nonetheless, with so much auditing happening, there are still cases were people fall through the cracks. Another wave of companies that create “worker voice apps”, intend to “give the supply chain a voice” by connecting workers directly to the consumer (even if anonymously, to protect the workers from retribution), include CTMFile, Alexandria, and PrimaDollar (PrimaDollar Media, 2021; Tim Nicolle, 2021; “Worker Voice,” 2022). If people working at the factories can directly report working conditions to a safe and anonymous tool, it could serve as a data source for further investigation of labor issues. While there are certainly pitfalls to this approach, one could imagine assigning each factory a social score based on the S-band of their general ESG performance.

These issues do not pertain only to legacy industries. With the increase of gig-work, platform economy companies have been criticized for their lack of concerns for workers rights (S in ESG). In the absence of continunous assessment, sometimes intrepid journalists come in to cover the issues. One example is the coverage by (Siddiqui et al., 2024), using portable Atmotube Pro air pollution tracking devices (the same device I use myself) to document how gig workers across South Asia, from India to Bangladesh to Pakistan are subjected to pollution, finding PM2.5 exposure 10x over the WHO daily guideline, shortening lives (according to the Air Quality Life Index) by 11.9 years in New Delhi, 8.1 years in Dhaka, and 7.5 years in Lahore, respectively. Air quality varies dramatically between places, however taking the global average in 2022, if fine particulate pollution were reduced to meet the WHO guideline, a person would have gained 1 year and 11 months of life expectancy (Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth, 2022).

The above charts shows a comparions of air quality trends in South Asia vs Taiwan; while air pollution has increased in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, Taiwan has returned to the pollution levels of 1990s.

Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance: Criteria for a Shared Language

Since the 1970s, international bodies, governments, and private corporations have developed sustainability measurement metrics, the prominent one being ESG (Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance) developed by the UN in 2005. This rating system has already been implemented or is in the process of being adopted on stock markets all over the world and has implications beyond the stock markets, allowing analysts to measure companies’ performance on the triple bottom line: the financial, social, and environmental metrics.

Taiwan has listed ESG stocks since 2017 and was hailed by Bloomberg as a regional leader in ESG reporting (Grauer, 2017). In December 2017, the FTSE4Good TIP Taiwan ESG Index was launched, which tracks ESG-rated companies on the Taipei stock market (Taiwan Index, 2024). Nasdaq Nordic introduced an ESG index in 2018, and Euronext, the largest stock market in Europe, introduced an ESG index and a series of derivative instruments in the summer of 2020 (Euronext, 2020).

(The Importance of ESG Measurement and Canada’s Opportunity for Improvement, 2022) suggests ACWI ESG leaders outperform the non-ESG screened ACWI based on comparing MSCI indexes. It’s notable that ACWI ESG started to outperform the traditional ACWI only in the past few years (evidence that capital markets are starting to price sustainability, but still inconsistently). Nordic Climate Transparency Leadership analysis of Nasdaq OMX Nordic 120 companies: “companies with higher quality climate reporting also provide higher returns”. In contrast, (D. Luo, 2022) found firms with a lower ESG score are more profitable.

Towards Green Transparency - But Who Does the Rating?

Trucost, a company launched in 2000 to calculate the hidden environmental costs of large corporations and advance circular-economy practices was acquired in 2016 by S&P Dow Jones Indices, which by 2019 became a part of its ESG product offering (Indices, Oct 03, 2016, 08:30 ET; Mike Hower, Dec 9, 2015 7am EST; “S&P Rolls Out Trucost ESG Data to Its Customers,” 2019; Toffel & Sice, 2011). It’s parent company S&P Global also acquired RobecoSAM’s ESG rating business, consolidating S&P’s control of ESG ratings (George Geddes, 2019).

A meta-review of 136 research articles discovered the following ESG-rating agencies.

Three frameworks for corporate to think about ESG compliance is to position their company on the MEET, EXCEED, and LEAD scale based on the size, complexity and available resources of the company.

Robeco’s survey of 300 large global investors totaling $27T under management found biodiversity-protection is increasingly a focus-point of capital allocation (Robeco, 2023).

ESG Success Depends on Good Governance: Boards, Policy, and Investor Pressure

Governance in ESG is the G that makes E and S happen - or put in another way: governance drives social and environmental initiatives at companies. Yet MSCI research finds company boards severely lacking in climate experts; among the 164 large CO2 emitters (1986 directors in total) benchmarked by the Climate Action 100+ alliance, 65% have no board member with demonstrated climate expertise, highlighting a major governance gap (Climate Action 100+, 2023; Sommer et al., 2024).

Region	Companies (n)	≥ 1 Climate Expert (%)	≥ 1 Expert (count)	No Experts (%)	No Experts (count)
EMEA	52	48 %	25	52 %	27
Americas	61	36 %	22	64 %	39
APAC	51	20 %	10	80 %	41

Most companies do not meet the criteria (Climate Action 100+, 2023).

Lack of leadership is a key challenge for sustainability. (Capgemini, 2022) “Many business leaders see sustainability as costly obligation rather than investment in the future” was the finding from the Capgemini Research Institute’s report “Why sustainability ambition is not translating to action” surveyed 2,004 executives from 668 large organizations; 53% of leaders view sustainability initiatives as a financial burden, believing the costs outweigh the benefits, and only 21% agree that the business case for sustainability is clear, underscoring a pervasive leadership gap that treats sustainability as a costly obligation.

A systematic study of 153 peer-reviewed papers of ESG literature published between 2006 and 2023 around the world reports the major determinants of high ESG performance are board member diversity, firm size, and CEO attributes; actively diversifying boards, especially adding members with sustainability expertise, and aligning executive compensation with ESG targets to translate strategic ambitions into operational results, may boost ESG outcomes (Martiny et al., 2024).

The CEO of the Swedish clothing producer H&M - one of the largest fast-fashion companies in the world -, recognized the potential impact of conscious consumers as a threat (Hoikkala, 2019) and at the same time launched a clothes repair service in partnership with the Norwegian start-up Repairable, as reported by the Norwedgian Sustainability Hub (S HUB, 2018). These kind of discrepancies are all over the place. While Coca-Cola is the largest plastic polluter in the world, at the same time it runs the “World Without Waste” program which supports packaging recycling around the world, reporting achieving a global 90% recycling rate for Coca-Cola packaging (Break Free From Plastic, 2024; Simões-Coelho et al., 2023). Large corporations such as Coca Cola and Nestle also support the biodiversity law, calling for a level playing field for business limit biodiversity risk (Greens EFA, 2023).

Many large businesses have tried to find solutions by launching climate-focused funding. (Korosec, 2021) reports that Amazon’s 2B USD to a Climate Pledge Fund earmarked to fix climate problems is invested in energy, logistics, and packaging startups, which will reduce material waste. “Good intentions don’t work, mechanisms do,” Amazon’s founder Bezos is quoted as saying in (Clifford, 2022). Walmart is taking a similar approach, having launched a project in 2017 to set CO₂ reduction targets in collaboration with its suppliers (Walmart, 2023). These examples underline how money marketed as climate funding by retail conglomerates means focus on reducing operational cost of running their business through automation and material savings.

Shareholders can leverage their numbers and join forces in order to affect the board members of large corporations. For example, the As Your Sow NGO aims to champion CSR through building coalitions of shareholders and taking legal action, including the Fossil Free Funds initiative which researches and rates funds’ exposure to fossil fuels finance and its sister project Invest in Your Values rates retirement plans offered by employers (mostly US technology companies) (As You Sow, 2024a, 2024b)

Board diversity in the top 5 sustainable companies in 2024 based on Corporate Knights rankings (Corporate Knights, 2024).

ESG Success Depends on Digitization and GenAI

In the U.S. and European banking sector (Dicuonzo et al., 2024) performed an analysis of 1551 banks, of which only 180 banks disclosed sufficient ESG data for comparison, building an Fintech Adoption Index; the key findings included a positive correlation between Fintech Index and ESG Scores , suggesting the adoption of technology has a statistically significant influence on better environmental stewardship, social and governance quality. Even larger predictors of high ESG score were than were Board Gender Diversity (Women on Board), the Size of the Bank, and Board Independence (governance structures with more independent directors could be more socially and environmentally responsible).

In the context of China’s industrial modernization,(Lu & Li, 2023) finds that digitization is the pathway to increased Environmental Information Disclosure (EID) and Green Innovation, correlating with increased numbers of green patents and sustainable R&D projects.

The ability to build sustainability into the organization requires deep understanding of how the complex structure works and what drives change and innovation within business units. (Jim Boehm et al., 2021) distilled key strategies from the banking sector to speed up digital transformation, while improving risk management and compliance.

Banking transformation strategies from [@jimboehmBetterRiskControls2021]

Strategy	Description
Enterprise-level Risk Taxonomy	A unified classification system that defines and categorizes all risk types across the entire organization.
Embedded Controls in Agile Delivery	Risk-and-compliance integration directly into agile development sprints (a type of management style in building software) to catch issues as code is written.
Cross-functional Risk–Business Collaboration	Joint ownership of risk by compliance teams and business units, ensuring controls are practical and business-aligned.
Metrics-driven Monitoring	Continuous tracking of key risk indicators through quantifiable metrics to spot trends and trigger alerts.
Proactive Remediation	Early detection and rapid resolution of control defects before they escalate into larger compliance or security gaps.
Continuous Capability Building	Ongoing training and tooling updates; best-practice sharing to keep risk-management skills and processes current.

These banking transformation strategies sit alongside strict regulatory requirements, such as Know Your Customer (KYC), and emerging technologies like generative AI, which is already reshaping compliance workflows. (Rahul Agarwal et al., 2024) details how genAI is being used for the purposed of compliance and comprehensive risk assessment in modern banking.

GenAI usage for comprehensive risk management from cyber- to climate threats in modern banking as per [@rahulagarwalHowGenerativeAI2024].

GenAI Use Case | Description ============================+==================================================================================================================================================================+ Regulatory Compliance | Automate policy-document triage: draft regulatory-change summaries and flag emerging rules, then generate compliance manuals. |

Financial Crime | Generate suspicious-activity reports; streamline AML/KYC checks; identify anomalous transaction patterns. |

Credit Risk | Synthesizing credit-risk reports on demand by pulling together relevant financial data from a variety of sources, resulting in faster borrower risk assessments. |

Analytics and Modeling | Build and validate risk models; run scenario analysis; summarize complex data sets for insights. |

Cyber Risk | Monitor threat-intelligence feeds; draft incident-response reports; automatically search for, and possibly even patch security gaps. |

Climate Risk | Distill lengthy climate-scenario reports; visualize key metrics; accelerate enterprise-level climate-risk assessments. |

While ESG is riddled with problems, it has started a common language and there are many ways how to improve it. The advice consultancies are providing to banks establishes a common language and helps banks to sell strategical alignment for long-term institutional sustainability in terms of environmental, social, and governance performance. PWC suggests “asset managers educate their staff and client base. ‘It will be critical to build stronger ESG expertise among their employees by up-skilling existing staff on ESG principles and strategically scout for and integrate more diverse and ESG-trained talent’” (PWC, 2020).

• For AI-powered assistants to be able to provide guidance, metrics are needed to evaluate sustainable assets, and ESG provides the current state-of-the-art for this. The largest obstacle to eco-friendly investing is greenwashing where companies and governments try to portray an asset as green when in reality it’s not. A personal investing assistant can provide an interface to focus on transparency, highlighting data sources and limitations, to help users feel in control of their investment decisions, and potentially even provide large-scale consumer feedback on negative practices back to the business through infringement discovery.

In general, a futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell a market index at a fixed price on a set date, locking in today’s price for the future. The exchange’s clearinghouse guarantees the trade, so one doesn’t have to worry about the other side not honoring the deal. ESG futures specifically, are financial derivatives, standardized contracts, which allow investors to hedge or speculate on the future performance of ESG-compliant investments. Some ESG futures contracts include the E-mini S&P 500 ESG futures (on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a large derivatives exchange), which track the U.S. S&P 500, while skipping companies with poor ESG scores, letting one bet on or hedge “sustainable” American companies with large market capitalization; notably, the index has recently been renamed to S&P 500 Scored & Screened Index, without a specific mention of the acronym ESG, while keeping the methodology unchanged, presumably for marketing purposes in the changing political landscape (CME Group, 2025). In Europe, the STOXX Europe 600 ESG-X futures (on the Eurex stock market) let one trade Europe’s top ESG-screened companies, with cash settlement and the same margin rules as regular (non-ESG) index futures (Deutsche Börse Group, 2025; Harding, 2019). Globally, the MSCI Sustainability and Climate Change futures (on the Intercontinental Exchange) cover global and regional ESG benchmarks, allowing one to take a position on low-carbon or Paris Climate Agreement-aligned stock indices anywhere in the world (Intercontinental Exchange, 2025). The CFI2Z4 Carbon Emissions Futures tool tracks live coverage of ICE EU Allowance futures priced in EUR per tonne, with real-time quotes as well as historical charts, enabling traders to monitor and analyze the compliance-phase carbon market (Investing.com, 2024). Specifically in Taiwan, the FTSE4Good TIP Taiwan ESG futures (on TAIFEX, Taiwan Futures Exchange), launched in June 2020 to follow a basket of Taiwanese stocks that meet global ESG standards (TAIFEX, 2025).

ESG Accessibility: Curbing Corruption with Realtime Data Streams and Product Lifecycle Traceability

ESG is a marketing tool but it could achieve more. One of the key emerging issues is that ESG is an annual report not real-time, actionable data. (Sahota, 2021) argues that “[T]hanks to other emerging technology like IoT sensors (to collect ESG data) and blockchain (to track transactions), we have the infrastructure to collect more data, particularly for machine consumption. By measuring real-time energy usage, transportation routes, manufacturing waste, and so forth, we have more quantifiable ways to track corporations’ environmental performance without relying purely on what they say.”

(Tim Nicolle, 2021) believes “Real-time ESG data is more difficult to greenwash”, “supply chain is a significant source of ESG content but the real breakthrough is how we can surface that real-time ESG data directly to individuals in the shops and online, linked to the products that they are browsing and potentially buying. This means that ESG change will finally be driven by the ultimate judge of business success – the customer.” (Ratkovic, 2023).

• Real Time ESG Tracking From StockSnips (2021) “Real Time ESG Tracking From StockSnips”

(Kyle Wiggers, 2022) a startup called Makersite proposes instant sustainability impact from supply chain, deep supply-chain data can surface product–level environmental footprints in minutes instead of months, which they call “Product Lifecycle Intelligence”. (Makersite, n.d.) proposes product sustainability modeling.

Google Environmental Insights Explorer enables local governments (cities) to measure CO2 emissions and enact environmental policies that optimize city functions such as traffic flows (Methodology - Google Environmental Insights Explorer - Make Informed Decisions, n.d.; Nicole Lombardo, 2021). Several cities such as Tokyo, Shenzhen (深圳), and Paris have voluntarily set carbon emissions caps (Koike, 2018; Song, 2025; Zhijian, 2023). Integration with sustainability-services may help cities achieve these goals faster.

For corporations respond to the climate crisis they are expected to become more digital and data-driven. Requirements ESG compliance has given rise to a plethora of new monitoring tools. LSEG’s MarketPsych ESG Analytics platform mines global news and social feeds for near‐real‐time controversy alerts and ESG risk‐scores with historical data going back to 1998 (LSEG, 2025). Envify aim to automate compliance with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), by providing a suite of carbon accounting tools (Rajan, 2025). Flowit Estonia automated real‐time CO2e accounting in 2022 by combining invoices and sensor data to generating instant per‐transaction emission footprints (Indrek Kald, 2022).

There’s also a growing number of companies helping businesses to measure CO2e emissions in through their entire product lifecycle. In order to improve product provenance, blockchains offer transparency. Several enterprise blockchain offerings from vendor such as Hyperledger Fabric and ConsenSys use immutable supply‐chain ledgers to record origin, certifications, and product movements end‐to‐end (“Blockchain Companies Team Up To Track ESG Data,” 2021). Blockchain’s immutable data and programmable incentives enable transparent ESG tracking, secure carbon‐credit registries and tokenized rewards that align corporate behavior with climate goals (Ganu, 2021).

• Supply Chain Mapping improves Transaction Traceability. What data should be surfaced to the consumer? The founder of Sourcemap Leonardo Bonanni started out with doing product autopsy in 2015 to assess products (<< Fast fashion >>, 2023)

• EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is a success story.

• Know your suppliers’ suppliers (Sourcemap, 2025): “Sourcemap’s Supply Chain Mapping platform (2025) offers a SaaS solution to document and monitor every tier of a company’s physical supply chain. It collects supplier-attested data and continuously verifies it through integrity checks and cross-referencing with third-party registries and watchlists. Real-time transaction traceability lets users audit all movements and detect fraud or non-compliance instantly, while an expert supplier-engagement team handles onboarding, training and ongoing support to keep maps current and compliant with global due-diligence laws”

Payments

Consumer Activits are a Small Minority

Recognition precedes protection, as the Estonian slogan goes: “Õpetame märkama, et oskaksime hoida” / “Learn to notice so we can preserve.” (Tartu loodusmaja, 2019). (Milne et al., 2020) coins the term mindful consumers, who do research and are aware of the impact of their shopping choices. Yet these types of mindful consumers and conscious consumers only make up a small percentage of the entire consumer public, which may make individual action seem close to meaningless.

For consumer activism to become mainstream it needs to much simpler. Sustainable options must become effortless: we need one-click tools that turn everyday spending into votes for circular design, transparent supply chains and mandatory climate disclosures. By setting clear CO₂-reduction targets for products, embedding dynamic ESG-risk pricing at point of sale, and harnessing our collective purchasing power, we can push companies to embed sustainability at the core of business, transforming vague ESG ideals into tangible market incentives.

There is plenty of research on if and how sustainable shopping could be possible. Already in 2016, (Klinglmayr et al., 2016) proposed a mobile app to channel “political consumerism” into sustainable shopping through self-regulation: personalized recommendations could be provided by aggregating vast product datasets into distilled advice, empowering individuals follow clear sustainable-shopping rules, discover like-minded peers, and communicate concerns directly to retailers, in theory turning vague ESG ideals into a transparent, data-driven, community-backed approach to sustainable consumption - however the Horizon 2020-funded was only deployed in 2 supermarkets (Estonia and Spain) as a pilot project. In order to understand the needed changes to shopping, (Fuentes et al., 2019) employed a shopping-as-practice ethnography in a Swedish zero-waste grocery store to show that removing packaging requires reinventing the shopping practice itself, e.g. introducing reusable containers, new retail setups, and consumer routines. (Weber, 2021) proposed a sustainable shopping guide in a study which demonstrates that embedding eco-score rankings into a mobile shopping app significantly increases consumers’ selection of low-impact food products by improving decision support and reducing information overload. Consumer psychology is complex and (van der Wal et al., 2016) discusses how status motives make people publicly display sustainable behavior, revealing that shoppers purchase branded reusable bags rather than bring their own, exposing a “paradox of green to be seen” and its hidden environmental costs.

Sustainable consumption relationships in Europe.

Make use of indexes to compare companies.

Shopping’s Environmental Footprint: Increasingly Driven by Digital Platforms, Social Commerce, AI Assistants

• Online Shopping impact. Single’s day, etc.

Double Eleven 11/11 celebrated on November 11 is the world’s largest shopping festival (時代財經, 2023). In June 2023, 526 million people watch e-commerce live-streams in China; online bargaining is a type of ritual (Liu et al., 2024). According to (Igini, 2024) “Asia is set to account for 50% of the world’s total online retail sales”.

It may seem impossible to turn the tide of consumerism, given the projected growth in online shopping (Forrester, 2024)

(The Influencer Factory, 2021) China is the furthest ahead in social shopping, the Chinese and U.S. market may be mature and growth will come from emerging markets (SEA, Latin-America).

In the US, TikTok is the leader in social commerce Loyst (2024)

important - more and more consumers using AI assistants to find alternative products, make shopping lists, etc Pandya (2025); Pastore (2025); Neuron (2025)

The Evolution of Payments: The Entry Point for Personal Finance from Mobile Wallets to Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) Services - Globally, and In Taiwan

Payments is one way consumers can take individual climate action. In the words of a Canadian investment blogger, “every dollar you spend or invest is a vote for the companies and their ethical and sustainability practices” (Fotheringham, 2017). The combination of consumption and investment is an access point to get the consumer thinking about investing. Even if the amount are small, they are a starting point for a thought process.

Data compiled from [@focustaiwanIPASSLaunchesQR2025; @taiwannewsPXPay1stTaiwan2025; @pxpayplusPXPayJPMorgan]

Payment App	Features	Users in Taiwan	Origin
LINE Pay	Most popular payment app accepted all over Taiwan. Works stand-alone and inside the LINE messenger. Supports both in-store and online shopping payments, also direct P2P transfers to contacts (requires LINE Bank). Displays a map of its merchant network with discounts and coupons; integrates iPASS MONEY.	> 12 Million	Japan / Korea
JKOPay (街口支付)	QR code payments and P2P transfers to contacts; paying for bills.	> 7 Million	Taiwan
Taiwan Pay (台灣Pay)	Official Taiwanese Government app in collaboration with Taiwanese banks. Supports payments directly from bank accounts (without the need for a card). Supports QR code payments, P2P transfers to contacts and paying bills. A unique feature is cash withdrawal from ATMs without the need for a bank card.	> 6 Million	Taiwan
Apple Pay	Requires an Apple iOS device; uses credit/debit cards via NFC, Secure, In-app & web payments	?	USA
Google Pay	Supports NFC and credit/debit cards, in-app and online payments as well as public transport.	?	USA
iPASS MONEY (一卡通MONEY)	Digital version of the iPASS card which can be used for QR code payments, P2P transfers to contacts, paying bills and public transport.	?	Taiwan
E.Sun Wallet (玉山Wallet)	Requires the Taiwanese E.Sun Bank and allows QR payments, P2P transfers to contacts and paying bills as well as financial management tools.	?	Taiwan
Pi Wallet (Pi 拍錢包)	Payment app by the PChome online shop supporting in-store QR and online payments, and paying for bills a parking.	?	Taiwan
PXPay (全聯福利中心)	Payment app by PX Mart, the largest domestic Taiwanese supermarket chain, supporting QR code payments, offering rewards and discounts and loyalty plans. Recently expanded to Korea quoting the interest of Taiwanese young people in Korean culture. In early 2025, PXPay began offering a saving and investing service called “Digital Hen” in collaboration with J.P Morgan Asset Management. According to the press release, the service aims to be a beginner-friendly financial innovation helping shoppers get into micro-investing.	?	Taiwan
Hami Pay (中華電信)	Payment app by the largest phone company Chunghwa Telecom supporting NFC payments, public transport, and paying bills.	?	Taiwan
Samsung Pay (悠遊卡)	Requires a Samsung device; uses NFC; integrates EasyCard and credit/debit cards; supports public transport.	?	Korea

Banks and fintechs both are skilled at capturing user data and digital payments are an important entry point for financial services and a source of consumer action data, shopping data. Payments is the primary way consumers use money. Is there a funnel From Payments to Investing? ESG Shopping is about Changing our relationship with money. Make commerce more transparent. Current shopping is quite superficial. One barely knows the name of the company. You don’t know much about their background. Building consumer feeling of ownership, create meaningful connections between producers and consumers.

Digitalisation of payments creates lots of Point of Sale (PoS) data that’s valuable to understand what people buy. Banks have access to each person’s financial habits which makes it possible to model sustainable behavior using big data analysis. Asian markets have shown the fastest growth in the use of digital payments (McKinsey, 2020). In Macao, contactless payments are becoming the most prevalent form of value exchange, growing rapidly, up 40% from the prior year (“Contactless Payments Prevalent in Macau - City’s de Facto Central Bank,” 2023). In Europe, fintech is also one of the fastest-growing sectors, with 35% of the fintech ecosystem is made up by giants like Klarna, Checkout.com and Revolut and 65% belonging to new-comers; in general describe equally strong consumer uptake and friendly regulators (The European Fintechs to Watch in 2022, 2022). With the increasing number of financial services available, open banking initiatives, which set standards for financial data sharing, have the potential to improve the user experience by allowing people to access their data across all the different banking apps they use, seamlessly and securely, which improves the flow of the entire customer journey.

(Green Finance Platform, 2020) report predicts the rise of personalizing sustainable finance, because of its potential to grow customer loyalty, through improving the user experience. Similarly to good design, interacting with sustainable finance for the ‘green-minded’ demographics, providing a reliable green product is a way to build customer loyalty. The UN has been handing out Global Climate Action Awards since 2011 for idea such as the Climate Credit Card in Switzerland, which automatically tracks emissions of purchases, creates emissions’ reports for the user which can then be offset with investments in climate projects around the world (UNFCCC, 2023).

Sustainability data is an important part of the customer journey which digitalisation and digital transformation make increasingly accessible. Digital receipts are one data source for tracking one’s carbon footprint. In Taiwan, O Bank makes use of Mastercard’s data to calculate each transaction’s CO₂ emissions and offer Taiwanese clients “Consumer Spending Carbon Calculator” and “Low-Carbon Lifestyle Debit Card” products (Taiwan’s O-Bank Launches ’Consumer Spending Carbon Calculator,’ Rewards Carbon Reduction, 2022). This is based on technology by Mastercard, which has developed a white-label service for sustainability reports that banks can in turn offer to their clients (Mastercard, 2021). Similarly, Commons, formerly known as Joro, an independent app, analyses one’s personal financial data to estimate their CO₂ footprint (Chant, 2022). ReceiptHero’s digital-receipt platform records the CO₂e footprint for each purchase, turning every transaction into a data point for tracking individual emissions, promoting eco-awareness (Digital Receipts and Customer Loyalty in One Platform ReceiptHero, n.d.). Another example is the Dutch fintech company Bunq offers payment cards for sustainability, provided by MasterCard, which connects everyday payments to green projects, such as planting trees and donations to charities within the same user interface (Bunq, 2020). However, arguably this could be considered greenwashing as Bunq only plants 1 tree per every €1,000 spend with a Bunq card. The example marketed at students cites 8 trees planted this month while students scarcely would have €8,000 to spend every month.

Sharing a similar goal to Alibaba’s Ant Forest, Bunq’s approach creates a new interaction dynamic in a familiar context (card payments), enabling customers to effortlessly contribute to sustainability. However, it lacks the level of gamification which makes Alibaba’s offering so addictive, while also not differentiating between the types of purchases the consumer makes, in terms of the level of eco-friendliness.

Bunq promises to combine banking and eco-friendly actions in the same user interface.

In Nigeria, (Emele Onu & Anthony Osae-Brown, 2022) reports how in order to promote the eNaira digital currency use, the Nigerian government limited the amount of cash that can be withdrawn from ATMs “In Nigeria’s largely informal economy, cash outside banks represents 85% of currency in circulation and almost 40 million adults are without a bank account.” [E-Naira find papers]

In Kenya, M-Pesa started since 2007 for mobile payments, used by more than 80% of farmers (Parlasca et al., 2022; Tyce, 2020). Using digital payments instead of cash enables a new class of experiences, in terms of personalization, and potentially, for sustainability. Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is the biggest consumer payments / financing success story innovated by Klarna in Sweden in 2005 and Afterpay in Australia in 2015 but with roots in Layaway Programs created during the 1930’s US Great Depression (Kenton, 2023). By 2021, 44.1% of Gen-Z in the US had used BNPL according to (EMarketer, 2021). Users in the Gen-Z demographic mostly use BNPL to buy clothes (LHV, 2024).

People will be more likely to save and invest if it’s easy. In Sweden, point of sales (PoS) lending (BNPL, as introduced above) is a common practice, and one of the reasons for the success of Klarna, the Swedish banking startup, which has managed to lend money to more consumers than ever, through this improved user experience. Taking out loans for consumption is a questionable personal financial strategy at best. Yet, if people can loan money at the point of sales, why couldn’t there be 180 degrees opposite service - point of sales investing? And there is, called “round-up apps”. (Next Generation Customer Experience, n.d.) suggests “Targeted at millennials, Acorns is the investing app that rounds up purchases to the nearest dollar and invests the difference.” - and example of From Shopping to Investing. Likewise, many banks have started offering a service to automatically save and invest tiny amounts of money collected from shopping expenses. Every purchase one makes contributes a small percentage - usually rounded up to the nearest whole number - to one’s investment accounts. For example, (Swedbank, 2022), the leading bank in the Estonian market, offers a savings service where everyday payments made with one’s debit card are rounded up to the next Euro, and this amount is transferred to a separate savings account. Similarly, the Estonian bank (LHV, 2020) offers micro-investing and micro-savings services, with an interesting user experience innovation showing how for an average Estonian means additional savings of about 400€ per year. User experience innovation can improve accessibility and financial inclusion, while opening up a new market which used to be underserved. For example, (Y Combinator, 2023) launched a bank inside of Whatsapp for the underbanked gig workers in Latin America.

While the financial industry is highly digitized, plenty of banks are still paper-oriented, running digital and offline processes simultaneously, making them slower and less competitive, than startups. Indeed, the new baseline for customer-facing finance is set by fintech, taking cues from the successful mobile apps in a variety of sectors, foregoing physical offices, and focusing on offering the best possible online experience for a specific financial service, such as payments.

Traditional banks and fintechs are becoming more similar than ever. 39% of Millenials are willing to leave their bank for a better fintech (n = 4282); innovation in payments helps retention (PYMNTS, 2023). The European Central Bank describes fintech as improving the user experience across the board, making interactions more convenient, user-friendly, cheaper, and faster. “Fintech has had a more pronounced impact in the payments market […] where the incumbents have accumulated the most glaring shortcomings, often resulting in inefficient and overpriced products,” Yves Mersch, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB says in European Central Bank (2019).

There are also people who are concerned with digital payments. There are concerns digital currencies also help to “democratize financial surveillance”. China was a money innovator introducing paper money in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) (“First Paper Money,” n.d.). Jeff Benson (2022) is troubled by the “use the e-CNY network to increase financial surveillance” (“Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Tracker,” 2023) believes digital currencies make tracking easier. Economist Eswar Prasad argues that the era of “private” cryptocurrencies is coming to an end down as they’ll be supplanted by government-backed central bank-issued digital currencies that marry blockchain’s efficiency with legal oversight (MARISA ADÁN GIL, 2022). The same author compares WeChat, Alipay vs the digital yuan [Yahoo Finance (2022)].

There are many neobanks, or challenger banks, far too many to list. The table only includes a small sample of banks and the landscape is even larger if one includes the wider array of fintechs. Neo-banks often use sustainability marketing. Legendary investor Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway invested $1 Billion USD in Nubank, Brazilian digital challenger Bank, while reducing its stakes in Mastercard and Visa, signaling growing faith in digital banking platforms over traditional card-issuers (Andrés Engler, 2022).

The following popular (totaling millions of users) robo-advisory apps combine sustainability, personalization, ethics, and investing however, they are mostly only available on the U.S. market.

Data compiled from [@ZigluFastSimple; @lightyearLightyearInvestingOwn; @SelmaYourFinances; @MosMoneyApp; @monzoOnlineBankingMade2023; @NubankFinalmenteVoce].

Service	Features	Availability
Goodments	Matching investment vehicles to user’s environmental, social, ethical values	USA
Wealthsimple	AI-assisted saving & investing for Millennials	USA, UK
Ellevest	AI-assisted robo-advisory focused on female investors and women-led business	USA
Betterment	AI-assisted cash management, savings, retirement, and investing	USA
Earthfolio	AI-assisted socially responsible investing	USA
Acorns	AI-assisted micro-investing	USA
Trine	Loans to eco-projects	USA
Single.Earth	Nature-back cryptocurrency	Global
Grünfin	Invest in funds	EU
M1 Finance	Finance Super App	US
Finimize	Investment research for anyone	US
NerdWallet	Financial clarity all in one place	US
Tomorrow Bank	Green Banking	EU
Marcus Invest	Robo-Advisor	US
Chipper	Digital cash app for African markets	Africa
Lightyear	Simple UI for Stocks, ETFs, interest from Estonia	EU
Ziglu	UK simple investing app	UK
Selma	Finnish investing app	EU
Monzo	Bank	UK
Nubank	Bank	Brazil
EToro	Investing and copy-investing	EU
Revolut	From payments to investing	UK, EU
Mos	Banking for students	US
Robinhood	Investing	US
Mintos	Buy bonds and loans	EU

Becoming a major payments player requires navigating the maze of global directives, including legislation regarding finance, privacy, data protection, money laundering, localized licensing regimes, and more. For an example, Google Wallet’s privacy notice sheds some light on how a unified payments profile links services under one’s Google account while following its broader data‑use policies (Google, 2025).

Alipay is by far the largest payments super-app and provides two investment services within it’s payments platform, first launching Yu’e Bao (餘額寶) in 2013, which automatically invests small amounts on the users’ accounts for returns typically above those of traditional banks’ saving accounts, and later in 2015 Ant Fortune (螞蟻財富), offering access to thousands of investment products from partner companies (KraneShares, 2020). Alibaba owns over 30% of Alipay and both companies are pushing for increased use of AI within their services (“Chinese Billionaire Jack Ma Sees AI Future for Ant Group, in Rare Appearance,” 2024).

Similary, both Line, through it’s Line Pay, Line Securities, and Line Bank, and Naver, though Naver Pay, have been on a path for several years evolving into comprehensive financial platforms (Anna J. Park, 2023; LINE Corporation, 2019). None of these payment apps have a specific focus on sustainability while Alipay does have a separate sustainability-focused service called Ant Forest for planting trees. Payment apps created by Apple and Google are less-feature rich focusing on payments only, and are being challenged by new-comers. An Australian fintech Douugh released it’s robo-advisor in 2024 (Paul, 2024). Douugh’s tagline explain the ethos of a unified financial app simply: “One app to spend and grow your money”. The newest generation of robo-advisors are integrating large-language modules, for example Reuters highlights the Chinese brokerage firm Tiger Brokers as one among 20 Chinese companies integrating DeepSeek deeply into asset management from simple chat functionality all the way to executing trades.

Established Consumer Payment Giants

Service	Features	Website	Availability	Users	Investing	Savings	Shopping (Payments)	Sustainability Focus
Alipay	Payments, banking, Yu’e Bao, Ant Fortune investing	alipay.com	China, Global (limited)	1.3 billion	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
WeChat Pay	Payments, financial services, Licaitong investing	wechat.com	China, Global (limited)	900 million	Yes	No	Yes	No
Apple Pay	Contactless payments	apple.com/apple-pay	Global	744 million	No	No	Yes	No
PhonePe	Payments, mutual funds, digital gold	phonepe.com	India	590 million	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Paytm	Payments, banking, Paytm Money for stock & fund investing	paytm.com	India	350 million	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Google Pay	Payments, loyalty, transit	pay.google.com	Global	150 million	No	No	Yes	No
Samsung Pay	Mobile payments	samsung.com	Global	?	No	No	Yes	No
Zelle	Bank-to-bank P2P payments	zellepay.com	USA	?	No	Yes	Yes	No
Nubank	Full features of a traditional bank in a digital form	nubank.com.br	Brazil	?	No	Yes	Yes	No

Growth Companies

For human psychology, the fact that money on a Wise account will accrue value while on Monese it’s just static, immediately makes Wise more attractive, even if the amounts are small.

Service	Features	Website	Availability	User Base	Investing	Savings	Shopping (Payments)	Sustainability Focus	Notes
Venmo	P2P payments, crypto investing	venmo.com	USA	70 million	Yes	No	Yes	No
Cash App	P2P payments, stock & Bitcoin investing	cash.app	USA, UK	57 million	Yes	No	Yes	No
Chime	Online banking services including spending accounts, savings accounts	chime.com	USA	22 million	No	Yes	Yes	No
MoneyLion	Banking, investing, credit-building loans, financial tracking tools	moneylion.com	USA	20 million	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
NerdWallet	Financial clarity all in one place	nerdwallet.com	USA	19 million	No	No	Yes	No
SoFi	Loans, banking, robo-investing, stock & crypto	sofi.com	USA	10 million	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Albert	Budgeting, saving, spending, investing, access to financial advisors	albert.com	USA	10 million	Yes	Yes	No	No
Acorns	AI-assisted micro-investing	acorns.com	USA	5.7 million	Yes	No	No	No
Wealthsimple	AI-assisted saving & investing for Millennials	wealthsimple.com	Canada, USA, UK	2.6 million	Yes	Yes	No	No
Qapital	Saving and investing with gamification features	qapital.com	USA	2 million	Yes	Yes	No	No
M1 Finance	Finance Super App	m1.com	USA	1 million	Yes	No	No	No
Finimize	Investment research for anyone	finimize.com	Global	1 million	Yes	No	No	No
Robinhood	Investing	robinhood.com	US	?	Yes	No	No	No
Betterment	AI-assisted cash management, savings, retirement, and investing	betterment.com	USA	?	Yes	Yes	No	No
Revolut	From payments to investing	revolut.com	UK, EU	?	Yes	No	TRUE	No
Monzo	Bank	monzo.com	UK	?	No	Yes	No	No
eToro	Investing and copy-investing	etoro.com	EU	?	Yes	No	No	No
Marcus Invest	Robo-Advisor	marcusinvest.com	USA	?	Yes	No	No	No
Varo Bank	Online banking services including checking and high-yield savings	varomoney.com	USA	?	No	Yes	Yes	No
Stash	Micro-investing platform enabling small investments	stash.com	USA	?	Yes	No	No	No
Mint	Budgeting tools, bill tracking, free credit score monitoring	mint.com	USA	?	No	No	No	No	Ceased operations

Up-and-Coming Startups

Service	Features	Website	Availability	User Base	Investing	Savings	Shopping (Payments)	Sustainability Focus	Notes
Chipper Cash	Digital cash app for African markets	chippercash.com	Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, USA	?	No	No	Yes	No
Douugh	AI financial wellness app, smart account, saving tools	douugh.com	USA, Australia	?	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Merged with Goodments
DUB	Copy-trading, mirror trades of notable figures	dubapp.com	USA	1 million downloads	Yes	No	No	No
Earthfolio	AI-assisted socially responsible investing	earthfolio.com	USA	?	Yes	No	No	Yes
Ellevest	AI-assisted robo-advisory focused on female investors and women-led business	ellevest.com	USA	?	Yes	No	No	No
Goodments	Matching investment vehicles to user’s environmental, social, ethical values	goodments.com	USA	?	Yes	No	No	Yes	Merged with Douugh
Grünfin	Invest in funds	grunfin.com	EU	?	Yes	Yes	No	No	Ceased operations
Lightyear	Simple UI for Stocks, ETFs, interest from Estonia	lightyear.com	EU	?	Yes	No	No	No
Mintos	Buy bonds and loans	mintos.com	EU	?	Yes	No	No	No
Mos	Banking for students	mos.com	US	?	No	Yes	Yes	No
Selma	Finnish investing app	selma.com	EU	?	Yes	No	No	No
Single.Earth	Nature-backed cryptocurrency	single.earth	Global	?	Yes	No	No	Yes
Tomorrow Bank	Green Banking	tomorrow.one	EU	120,000	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Trine	Loans to eco-projects	trine.com	USA	?	Yes	No	No	Yes
Ziglu	UK simple investing app	ziglu.io	UK	?	Yes	No	No	No

Considering AI assistant for ESG investing, (G. K. S. Tan, 2020) proposes “financial ecologies” to understand the dynamic relationships between various actors: investors, advisors, government, where the government plays an active role in growing financial inclusion and responsible financial management; however, the paper further suggests that current robo-advisors (available in Singapore) make the investor captive to the agency of AI, making the person lose agency over their financial decisions.

The Psychology Saving: Anthropomorphism and Loyalty Schemes

There are at least two ways to look at sustainable savings, however related. In general, people will save nature if it also saves money. This section looks at savings in the financial sense of the word. Savings in the sense of CO₂e emission and environmental cost reductions have an entire separate chapter dedicated to them titled ‘sustainability’ however a short definition might be valuable here as well.

Environmental Savings means “the credit incurred by a community that invests in environmental protection now instead of paying more for corrective action in the future” (see Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, 2018) and (Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT and Vanderbilt Students Take Legal Action to Try to Force Fossil Fuel Divestment - The Washington Post, n.d., p. 33).

Savings in CO₂e equivalent emissions: CO₂e savings are the amount of CO₂e reduction one manages to achieve by changing one’s behavior and influencing others (people, companies). While the individual footprint is so small, the largest reduction will come from influencing large groups of people, either by leadership, role-model, or other means.

In theory, ethical savings accounts only finance businesses aligned with the customers’ values: screening out problematic and potentially harmful industries such as fossil fuels, tobacco, weapons, etc; in practice, one should carefully evaluate a bank’s investment principles, environmental policies and governance practices (Ethical Savings, 2023).

Pension funds are some of the largest asset holders and choosing where to invest one’s pension can be a sustainable financial action. College students might not have a pension fund yet, however their financial savvy will influence their choices in the future. Savings and investing are somewhat conflated because the large majority of savings that people have are invested by their banks. Thus the question of sustainable savings comes one of where exactly are they invested and what is the impact of that investment of sustainability. Savings are the money one has in a pension fund or managed by themselves. For the majority of people, savings are invested by the bank and make up the largest proportion on investments for the people who are not active investors themselves. However, there are cases where people manage their pensions themselves; for example due to a law change Estonian could take out their entire accumulated pension and invest or spend them however they wanted (Raido Tõnisson, 2022b). While many Estonians used the money for consumption, some people invested their retirement funds in crypto(Marten Põllumees, 2022).

Saving precedes investing. From building loyalty to building ownership, the first step towards investing is to start saving money. How to encourage savings in daily life and make it a part of the everyday payments experience? Even starting with a small step, gathering a small target amount per month for savings, has the potential to shift the user’s way of thinking about money. The second step, choosing where to invest these savings, will help us begin thinking like an investor. To start noticing trends and looking into how finance shapes the world. One experimental study showed people think about putting money in a “safe” place and money anthropomorphism increased saving behavior by 18%(L. Wang et al., 2023). Mobile money users are better at saving (Naito et al., 2021). Nerdwallet’s (Tommy Tindall, 2023) suggests making financial commitments instead of resolutions, in order to successfully save money.

Help consumers save money and business increase repeat business. Building customer loyalty is a key part of repeat business and financial predictability for any company. Large consumer brands like Starbucks have for long ran successful rewards programs that encourage customers to come back (Steinhoff & Zondag, 2021). Could loyalty schemes create a pathway to investing in the company to a strengthen the feeling of connection with the business even further? After all, I’m now a minority owner! Yet in practice, many consumers lack the financial literacy for investing and there are many legislative difficulties for turning loyalty points into investments. It’s easier instead to create a separate cryptocurrency or token program which users could collect and redeem for some benefit.

Example sustainable loyalty schemes

Company	Scheme
Patagonia	“Worn Wear” program
H&M	Garment Collecting program
The Body Shop	Return, Recycle, Repeat

Loyalty schemes can take a physical form. In Malaysia, Beebag shopping bags made of recycled plastic bottles with a NFC ship that works in conjunction with an app to provide rebates for customers (The Green Factor, 2022).

Sustainable Investing: Measuring the Eco-Investment Gap

By the latest estimates sustainability lacks several trillions of USD in investment. Even with massive financing already in the pipeline, the estimate for the global financing gap for low-carbon energy production was 5.2 trillion USD as of 2016 (Earth Day, 2023; “Mapping the Gap,” 2016). Ray Dalio puts the needed climate investment at $5T and believes these financial goals won’t be met (Ray Dalio, 2023). A newer United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) calculation lowered the world needs an additional 4.1 Trillion USD of financing in nature-based solutions by 2050 to meet climate change, biodiversity, and land degradation reduction targets (UNEP, 2022). According to (The Rockefeller Foundation, 2022) a slightly lower 2.5-3.2 Trillion USD would be sufficient.

What if 10% of annual consumer spending – ten percent is about $2,8T - went towards protecting our climate. The theme for the 2023 Earth Day was “Invest In Our Planet”.

The needed investment doesn’t seem so large, around 5% of the global GDP, if one compares it to the per year Global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimated at around 100 Trillion USD in 2022 and growing to 105 Trillion USD in 2023 (Aaron O’Neill, 2023; IMF, 2023). In essence, the estimated total investment gap in climate fits into the economic growth of 1-2 years of the global economy. (OECD, 2024) projects steady economic growth 3.1% in 2024 and 3.2% in 2025 while the (World Bank & World Bank, 2024) is more conservative projecting 2.6% and 2.7% respectively.

• Bad news. Indeed, it would be easier for large institutional investors to move their money to sustainable assets than for retail investors to move their relatively small investments.

The lack of funding in green energy especially affects emerging economies (“Mobilizing Capital Into Emerging Markets and Developing Economies,” 2022). “We can and must channel private capital into nature-based solutions. This will require policy and regulatory support, catalytic capital and financial innovation” argued the CEO Green Finance Institute, Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas, ahead of COP27 in Egypt (Green Finance Institute, 2023). It’s not happening fast enough.

Comparative data on needed climate investment and other valuable assets; all figures in Trillions of USD [@s&pglobalWorld100Largest2019; @grandviewresearchRealEstateMarket2021; @aarononeillGlobalGDP198520282023; @imfWorldEconomicOutlook2023; @stephanieaaronsonHowAppleBecame2023; @statistaRetailMarketWorldwide2023; @statistaGlobalRetailEcommerce2021; @sifmaResearchQuarterlyEquities2023; @ustreasuryFiscalDataExplains2023; @raoVisualizing105Trillion2023; @thinkingaheadinstituteGlobalPensionAssets2023; @blockworksBitcoinPriceBTC2023; @blockworksEthereumPriceETH2023; @mckinsey&companyMcKinseyGlobalPrivate2023; @oguhBlackstoneReachesRecord2023; @foxRetailInvestorsWill2023; @trucostNaturalCapitalRisk2023]

High-Value Assets (Trillions of USD)
Global Real Estate (2020, valuation)	$326T
Global Equity Markets (2023, valuation)	$108T
Global GDP (2024, estimated)	$110T
Global GDP (2023, per year)	$105T
Global GDP (2022, per year)	$100T
Global Pension Funds (2023, valuation)	$47.9T
U.S. Equity Markets (2023, valuation)	$46.2T
U.S. National Debt (2023, valuation)	$32.6T
Millennials Inheriting Money from Parents in the U.S., U.K. and Australia (2022-2032)	$30T
Global Retail Sales of Goods and Services to Consumers (2023, per year)	$28.2T
GDP of U.S.A. (2023, per year)	$26.8T
GDP of China (2023, per year)	$19.3T
Global Private Market Assets (2023, per year)	$11.7T
Unpriced Externalities (2023, per year)	$7.3T
Global E-Commerce Sales (2021, per year)	$5.2T
Missing Climate Invesment (2022, estimate per year)	$4.1T
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (2019, total assets)	$4T
Global Real Estate Sales (2021, per year)	$3.7T
Apple Computers (2024, market value)	$3.1T
GDP of Japan (2023, per year)	$4.5T
GDP of Germany (2023, per year)	$4.3T
GDP of India (2023, per year)	$3.7T
U.S. Gen-Z and Millennials Consumer Spending (2022, per year)	$2.5T
NVIDIA 英偉達 (2024, market value)	$2.5T
Retail Investors (2023, liquid assets)	$1.8T
Blackstone (2023, total assets)	$1T
Bitcoin (2024, market cap)	$1T
GDP of Taiwan (2023, per year)	$0.8T
GDP of Finland (2023)	$0.3T
Ethereum (2024, market cap)	$0.3T
Individual Climate Investors (2020, per year)	$0.1T
GDP of Estonia (2023, per year)	$0.04T

While these assets and GDP values reflect different aspects of the global economy, the comparison illustrates that redirecting a relatively small fraction of global wealth and economic activity towards sustainable investments can close the investment gap. This perspective should inspire confidence that the goal is achievable with coordinated effort and policy support.

Retail Investing Enables Financial Inclusion and Growing Money Sustainably

Retail investing can be seen as a form of financial inclusion. Ant Group’s CEO Eric Jing remarked in (Turrin, 2021): “The financial system of the past 200 years was designed for the industrial era and served only 20% of the population and organizations. As we enter the digital age, we must better serve the remaining 80%”.

Many ecologically-focused funds with different approaches have been launched in recent years, with variations in asset mix and style of management; thematic asset management is expected to grow, with investors packaging opportunities based on consumer trends (Doorn, 2020). Among retail investors, there’s some appetite for sustainability however investors are not sure how to separate sustainable assets from less sustainable ones (Ho, 2019). While literature has been debating if it’s possible to “do well while doing good”, latest research suggests it’s possible to make investments that both make an attractive financial return and adhere to sustainability goals (Y.-M. Tan et al., 2023). “sustainable investing is now part of mainstream financial strategy” (Morgan Stanley, 2019).

(T. Smith, 2019) suggests 74% of Chinese youth are looking for “positive impact” and (Lingeswaran, 2019) suggest philanthropy is on the rise in Asia in general. (M. Li et al., 2022) suggests retail “investor attention can significantly improve enterprises’ green innovation level”.

Sweden is a country with highly developed financial markets and active social campaigns demanding sustainability as well as well as the home for several green fintech companies, including Doconomy and Trine (“Meet the Fintechs Leading Sweden’s Green Revolution,” 2021). (Lagerkvist et al., 2020) undertook a choice experiment “Preferences for sustainable and responsible equity funds” with 559 Swedish private investors In Sweden, and found that sustainability strategies and an environmental focus carry more weight than fees, past performance or fund size.

(BlackRock, 2022) notes some ESG-oriented hedge funds can be “highly engaged with management teams” in order to influence management towards ESG practices in said companies. Barclays’ 2021 investor survey found hedge‑fund LPs (limited partners) adding screening for ESG data and willingness to start new “green alpha” funds if performance can be proven by robust data (ESG Hedge Funds Barclays Corporate & Investment Bank, 2021). High quality data is the key to unlocking this potential. ESG Analytics founder Qayyum Rajan introduces a sentiment‑driven, alternative‑data platform that maps real‑time ESG events to SASB topics for deeper, faster screening (Qayyum Rajan, 2021). In addition to finance being increasingly data-driven, it’s also increasingly personalized, for example Vise showcases its AI‑powered portfolio‑builder that lets RIAs customise, manage and explain client portfolios at scale, pitching itself as the “Copilot for wealth managers”, allowing creation of highly personalised portfolios (Vise, 2023). RavenPack provides an analysis tool tracking media and sentiment to gauge capital flows driven by ESG (RavenPack, 2021).

Companies themselves need to better understand their emissions, giving birth to the industry of climate accounting. The myclimate NGO is among the many providers or detailed calculate climate cost calculators, consulting and verified carbon‑offset projects aimed at helping firms net‑zero targets (Myclimate – Your Partner for Climate Protection, 2023).

Institutional finance is highly linked and constantly learning from each-other. For example, The Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) is a coalition of over 140 central banks that publishes scenarios, best‑practice guides and policy papers on climate‑related financial risk (NGFS, 2023). In Thailand, the Thai Fintech Association site lists its ecosystem map, events and membership tiers aimed at fostering fintech innovation and regulatory dialogue in Thailand (“Thai Fintech Association (TFA),” n.d.). Online news platforms such as (“Green Central Banking,” n.d.) aggregate research and daily news on how central banks integrate climate risk—scorecards, policy trackers and expert commentary.

Investable Asset Classes for Retail Investors: Increasing Exposure to Stocks, Bonds, Commodities, Real-Estate, Digital Tokens and Alternatives, Lending, Futures, Hedge Funds, Private Equity, and even Venture Capital

There are many asset classes with varying degree of access to a retail investors. The main categories of investment products are, based on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission categorization (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025).

Investment Product
Stocks
Bonds
Mutual Funds
ETFs
Insurance Products such as Variable Annuities

There are also newer asset classes.

Stocks are the most popular assets class with a long history and highly accessible to retail investor, albeit usually at the cost of a trading fee. Meme stocks are another aspect of the entertainmenization of investing. There are many groups of Twitter, Reddit, and elsewhere, where investing trends start, causing more volatility. Retail investing apps blend entertainment into the UX/UI of investing. For example stock-trading app Robinhood uses game-like features such as displaying a confetti animation to create a sense of excitement around trading investing. Retail investing UI/UX is simplified and gamified, which encourage impulsive short-term buying and selling with a focus on speculation over fundamentals and cause FOMO (fear of missing out).

Bonds are a form of debt investment also known as an fixed-income asset where the principal is repaid at the maturation date of the bond (usually in years) with an added premium. Individuals can’t emit bonds but they can invest in them. It can be a way to invest locally in one’s own city - or globally. For individuals, there’s access to some green bond exposure through ETFs (exchange-traded funds) available on retail investing apps. Access is not universal and availability depends on the geography of the user and local legislation; for example Revolut, the most downloaded finance app in the EU, only enabled bond investing for European customers in summer 2024 (Revolut, 2024b, 2024a). Investing in bonds is a form of Passive Investing and allows investors focus on low-risk passive income instead of daily stock investing most popular on Robinhood and Revolut - albeit with much less potential for returns.

Lending is an attractive assets class with a significant social impacts providing opportunities to small farmers and other participants in the money markets while offering the lender a return, all possible through online apps and platforms. Retail investors can lend small amounts of money (also known as MicroLending) on peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms such as Twino. These loans and pooled and the risk is borne in aggregate as a form of risk-management.

Hedge funds generally are not accessible to retail investors, requiring a substantial minimum investment. However some Hedge Fund based ETFs (exchange-traded funds) and Mutual Funds with Hedge Fund Strategies may try to mimic hedge funds, investing in the same underlying assets. While hedge funds used to be available for professional investors, online platforms such as (Hedge, 2023) aim to provide retail investors a social investing experience to “make a hedge fund with your friends”, where people can come together and pool their funds in “mini‑fund”, with social tools such as chat and voting on trades built-in, aiming to democratize the hedge‑fund model for small retail groups. It’s how many people in the world of venture capital invest, investing together, or after a lead investor, who they trust. An early entrant into the market, (Renato Capelj, February 16, 2021 6:47 PM) positions Titan as a “mobile hedge‑fund” app, which is actively managed, with transparent fees, and a competitor to automated robo‑advisors.

Commodities are increasingly investable, with retail investors can now buy cold and silver as well as rare metals on financial platforms such as Revolut. Democratization of commodity trading lowers the barriers and allows individuals to diversify their portfolios beyond equities and bonds.

Real-estate is increasingly available on co-investing platforms allowing retail investors access into this asset class with a relatively low starting price. Thus investing in sustainable architecture can be an attractive proposal both from an environmental as from a financial standpoint, potentally providing a passive income stream in the form of rent. According to (Debnath et al., 2022) 39% of global CO₂ emissions comes from the building sector. Construction is large emitter because of the use of concrete; super tall buildings are very CO₂ intensive (Zhao & Qin, 2015). Building emissions can be reduced by using sustainable design and materials, digital twins of architecture enable pre-visualization of different designs (Panaro et al., 2024) as well modeling the usage of the building, for example the interior shop floors in commercial real-estate (Jia et al., 2023). In housing development, there’s evidence of ‘green’ buildings achieving a ‘higher financial return than conventional buildings, both in terms of rent and sale price’ (Oyedokun, 2017).

Venture capital largely remains inaccesible for retail investors, and not only for its high capital requirements; groups like the Investment Company Institute (ICI) pushing to increase retail access to private markets are criticized for exposing retail investors to increased risk (Langton, 2025). While value investors love rules-based screens such as the Piotroski F-score, used to identify stocks that have strong fundamentals, these measures break down for high-growth startups whose financials are distorted by deliberate burn (Gurung et al., 2025).

• “Green Bonds, Sustainable Equities, ESG-focused Mutual Funds and ETFs, Impact Investing (through platforms), Renewable Energy Infrastructure (via ETFs or mutual funds), Sustainable Real Estate (through REITs or ETFs), Social Bonds, Carbon Credits (via ETFs or specialized funds), Sustainable Commodities (via ETFs or funds), Community Investing (through CDFIs or crowdfunding platforms), Sustainable Infrastructure Funds (available as ETFs or mutual funds), Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Metrics Integration (through broad ESG-focused ETFs or funds)”

Thematic Capital refers to choosing a clear investing thesis around a topic and building a resilient strategy. For example, for ESG-themed investments might pick Green Bonds, Sustainable Equities, and ESG‑focused Mutual Funds and ETFs as the core, each screened through ESG metrics integration to ensure material impact rather than superficial marketing however although there is a wide range of investment products marketed as sustainable, many are fake, so rigorous due‑diligence is essential to weed out greenwashing and align holdings with authentic sustainability outcomes. Just like there are “green shops” for buy everyday products, there are also green investing platforms for purchasing various types of investment products that have been rated on some type of sustainability metric, for example green ETFs, green bonds, and the like. All of these are essentially forms of green branding, designed to make it easier for investors to find an investing product they trust.

There are many investment platforms self-describe as green, but the questions remains, who to trust.

Name	Description	Link	Sources
Trine		trine.com
The Many		the-many.com
Sugi		sugi.earth
ClimateInvest		clim8invest.com
Circa5000		circa5000.com
FairOwn	Aims to use product subscriptions to simplify circular economy, instead of buy-throw-away culture.	fairown.com	[@hankewitzEstonianFintechCompany2021]

Beyond the core, a diversified sustainable portfolio might incorporate Impact Investing through one of the platforms listed above that directly channels capital into mission‑driven ventures, Renewable Energy Infrastructure (via ETFs or mutual funds) supporting wind, solar, and hydro assets, and Sustainable Real Estate accessed through REITs or ETFs that prioritize energy efficiency and low‑carbon construction. Social Bonds expand the opportunity set by financing healthcare, education, and affordable housing, while Carbon Credits (via ETFs or specialized funds) and Sustainable Commodities (via ETFs or funds) offer exposure to emissions‑reduction markets and responsibly sourced raw materials, respectively. For deeper community impact, one might allocate some funds to crowdfunding and crowd-loan platforms and to Sustainable Infrastructure Funds (available as ETFs, bonds, and mutual funds) that upgrade transport, water, and grid systems for a low‑carbon future. In short, disciplined selection across various investment vehicles increasingly available to retail investors, guided by a robust investing thesis and aide by monitoring tools, in theory, would enable one to align financial performance with genuine social and environmental progress while avoiding the pitfalls of superficially labeled products.

Green and Sustainability-Linked Bonds

Green bonds are released by companies, international organizations, and cities to raise money for green transformation, usually for building something to improve sustainability, tied to specific projects. There’s a growing global trend in green bond emission, with 257 Billion USD worth of green bonds issued in 2019, expected to reach 1 Trillion USD annually by 2030 (MacAskill et al., 2021). That prediction was too low with 870 Billion USD green bond emissions reached already in 2023; currently Europe is the largest emitter of green bonds (Climate Bonds, 2023). China has the 2nd largest green bond market in the world and it’s growing fast; buyers are looking for green bond certification to reduce yield spread, meaning the price of the green bond is becoming more similar to the price of a ‘regular’ bond (Q. Li et al., 2022; Peng & Xiong, 2022). The Climate Bonds Initiative, which is working on greening the entire short-term debt (bond) market, puts the size of the entire market at $55 trillion, underlining the relative percentage of green bonds is tiny (“Climate Bonds Initiative Calls for Greening of $55trn Short-Term Debt Market,” 2022).

In 2017 the Malmö city in Sweden released green bonds to finance a sustainable transition of the city (City of Malmö, 2017). An independent analysis found bonds may not be emitted for financial reasons but to improve the reputation and city image, lower interest rate (aptly named greenium) with a similar in returns to traditional bonds - and have their share of challenges, namely being difficult to certify, monitor, report and measure impact of (Sjöström et al., 2020).

Making sure a green bond is truly supporting sustainability is a challenge. For example, Aramco, the Saudi Arabian public petroleum and natural gas company faced scrutiny for what critics deemed as ‘Fake green bonds’ (Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute (AFII), 2022). Green bonds can also be emitted on blockchains with the stated goal of improving transparency. Hong Kong multi-currency green bond on the blockchain. The issuer (Hong Kong government) hopes to reduce greenwashing (Hall, 2024; Kitano, 2024). In the EU as well, there are emerging tools for monitoring green bonds on blockchain (Christodoulou et al., 2023). (Qin et al., 2023) finds evidence that the combination of green bonds and blockchains are an enabler carbon neutrality in China. The World Bank successfully raised 110 Million USD in Australia in 2018-19 and has since doubled the amount in a new 220 Million USD emission in Switzerland using bonds on a blockchain ledger for SDG-related projects (World Bank, 2018, 2019, 2024).

Sustainability-Linked Bonds are less stringent than green bonds; they are not tied to specific projects but more broad sustainability targets (Priscila Azevedo Rocha et al., 2022): “Sustainability-linked bonds let companies borrow cheaply if they meet environmental, social, and governance targets. A Bloomberg News analysis found those goals are weak”. (Priscila Azevedo Rocha et al., 2022) suggests “So far, most ESG investing is in the stock market. But the the $22 trillion corporate bond market, where mature global companies such as Chanel go to borrow money from investors, has a particularly powerful role to play. Companies rely on debt much more than they do on stocks.”

Fusion of Traditional Finance and Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

Crypto-assets and digital tokens (known as decentralized finance or DeFi) are a highly accessible yet risky asset class, offering investment opportunities to anyone with a mobile phone and internet access. The low entry barrier makes crypto among the most potentially inclusive forms of investment, though bearing significant risks, as well as regulatory challenges. Cryptocurrencies are popular among young people yet in many ways crypto needs even more financial literacy than traditional financial assets. Crypto investing removes most entry barriers while having high risk.

(Statista, 2024) estimates over 860 million cryptocurrency users worldwide by 2025, just shying away from 1 Billion users. A Brazilian study (n = 573) found “Crypto investors in Brazil are generally younger, male, and exhibit higher risk tolerance compared to non-crypto investors.” Colombo & Yarovaya (2024) “Brazil’s planned adoption of CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency).” “It finds that risk tolerance, economic pessimism, and a belief in better investment acumen are significant predictors of crypto investment.”

The large number of crypto users begs the question: what would investing look like at the scale of 1 Billion people? The most popular use cases for crypto have been NFTs, online smart contracts attached to some type of asset, typically a picture. Social media is even bigger, with over 2 Billion users, so it’s not difficult to image the combination of Social + Crypto (NFTs?) to become the largest retails investing revolution, albeit a risky one, with many users losing their assets. This is the vision behind Sandbox, a Metaverse cryptocurrency sold by banks such as LHV in Estonia (Raido Tõnisson, 2022a).

Taiwan has an active market for crypto-assets while with some limitations. In 2022, the Taiwan government banned buying cryptocurrencies with credit card quoting the volatility makes it similar to gambling (David Attlee, 2022; 廣編企劃, 2022). In January 2022, BlockTempo and OpenSea teamed up to mint the “Top Taiwan Influencers” collection—21 unique, limited-edition Taiwanese digital influencers as NFTs, depicting Taiwan’s leading blockchain figures, designed to honor their industry contributions in digital art (OpenSea, 2022).

In general, crypto ownership can be divided into self-custody (you own the keys to your wallet) and custodial ownership, where you trust someone else (i.e. a centralized exchange or a bank) to hold the cryptocurrency for you. Both have their risks (self-custody, losing your keys; custodial: the exchange steals your tokens or goes bankrupt). Centralized crypto exchanges are in essence loaning assets from the user. “The piece of the settlement aimed at getting important information to customers is more understandable from a retail protection standpoint. Customers who lend crypto assets to a company in exchange for a promised return should get the information they need to assess the risks against the rewards” (Hester M. Peirce, 2022).

There’s also a large trend of fusion of decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi), with the largest established investors, such as BlackRock, launching tokenized funds (Matos, 2024; Sandor, 2024; Securitize, 2024). Tokenization is similar financial securitization which has been happening for a long time, with blockchains creating new tools for securitization: for example art can be securitized and tokenized (Masterworks, 2023). Blockchains makes this kind of financial engineering easier as any developer can do it; one does not need to be a bank.

In Switzerland, institutional funds entered crypto early. Licensed already in 2019 by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), AMINA, formerly known as SEBA Bank, was among the first regulated cryptocurrency banks (AMINA Bank AG, 2023). The first crypto fund was launched in September 2021, when FINMA approved Switzerland’s first regulated crypto-asset fund—the “Crypto Market Index Fund” from the same AMINA bank, giving investors access to a FINMA-supervised vehicle that tracks a diversified basket of blockchain-based assets with the AMINA Bank’s custody (FINMA, 2021). AMINA of course was not the only bank interested in crypto, with “[m]ore than half” of Swiss banks planning to offer digital assets services in the near future (swissinfo.ch/urs, 2022). Banks launching Crypto ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) enable their clients to have exposure to crypto without ever buying cryptocurrencies directly themselves. However, while owning cryptocurrency directly allows one to use crypto tools to look at any wallet balance, ETFs hide that transparency.

To put it very simply (knowingly oversimplifying), in traditional finance legislation is an enabler of corruption as in the case of Swiss privacy laws, where illegal funds can be hidden, while in cryptocurrencies, the lack of clear and comprehensive regulation is an enabler of corruption.

Pricing crypto is not based on any single fundamental metric, but comes from tokenomics: a catch-all word for token design and internal economics, such as supply schedules, emissions cuts, burns and staking yields to frame the basic scarcity curve as well as demand side narratives, and real world utility and user sentiment. Crypto enables significant potential for financial engineering and innovation by anyone with enough programming skills.

Bitcoin is by far the most popular cryptocurrency with it’s high price volatility creating opportunities for high gains and high losses. While bitcoin has been called a “digital gold” for store of value, its volatility characteristics are very different from gold, as seen on this chart.

The volatility of the markets has notably shifted crypto research towards pricing theories. However volatility is relative. Volatile national currencies lead people to find other assets to hold. If your national currency is collapsing, you might find crypto has a relative safe haven to keep your funds. People like Turkey losing 75% of the value of their assets when currency collapses, why people buy crypto.

• For example, in X research an index of major sustainability news was compared with crypto prices, which may have negative, positive, or no correlation with the following cryptocurrencies.

Regenerative Finance (ReFi) and DAOs

“Would you rather buy a DogeCoin or a regenerative food forest token?” Curve Labs founder Pat Rawson quotes Shiller (2019) in ReFi podcast about Kolektivo (ReFi DAO, 2022).

(Caio Jobim, 2022) believes Bitcoin has failed as a mainstream money but blockchain technology in general will underpin the next-generation digital-currency systems, ultimately replacing both cryptocurrencies and cash. While Bitcoin uses proof-of-work, and protocol which is highly energy intensive (and thus, unsustainable), later innovations such as proof-of-stake enabled the creation of blockchains, which are energy-efficient; an overview from 2023 details 23 low-carbon blockchains (Alzoubi & Mishra, 2023). (Sepandar Kamvar, 2022) Sepandar Kamvar, co-founder of Celo, famously calls “[a] blockchain is a database without a database admin”. (dGen & PositiveBlockchain, 2021) built a positive blockchain database of blockchain for good projects. Some traditional green investors have started to take note. (Marquis, 2021) reports on RSF Social Finance’s shifting from impact investing to regenerative finance, detailing its $230 million under management and community-pricing innovations. Blockchains are proliferating, with newer blockchains being more energy efficient (and thus having better sustainability properties); as of early 2025, there are nearly 2000 unique public blockchains in existence (Routescan Research Team, 2025; Schwartz, n.d.).

Inspired by the decentralized finance (DeFi) Summer of 2020, when projects like Compound, Yearn, and Uniswap demonstrated blockchain-based financial tools could go viral, followed by COVID-19, which exposed systemic fragility and served as a a wake-up call about global interconnectedness and ecological risk, crypto pioneers attempted to use their native tools for public good, instead of only financial goals, giving birth to the regenerative Finance (ReFi) movement, applying technology to carbon accounting, market development, and governance (B. Smith, 2021). Innovating on the intersection of blockchains, tokenization, nature-backed assets, and cryptocurrencies, ReFi leveraged DeFi to create financial systems that aimed to restore ecosystems and empower communities by prioritizing positive environmental and social impact (“What Is ReFi Regenerative Finance Explained,” 2023).

Founded already in 2018, Regen Network built a blockchain for ecological data and carbon credits, using the Cosmos blockchain SDK (Regen Network, 22 C.E., 2023). Another early example is the Celo proof-of-stake blockchain, founded in 2020, which offsets carbon emissions at the protocol level, automatically investing a small percentage of each transaction into a reserve, which buys green assets, such as tokenized carbon credits (e.g. Moss MCO₂), laying the groundwork for a regenerative financial system (“Celo and Regenerative Finance - Climate and ReFi,” 2021). (“Planet of the Klimates - Luis Adaime - Founder & CEO of MOSS.Earth,” n.d.) details the issuance and tokenization of tropical-forest carbon credits (Moss.Earth MCO₂) and biodiversity tokens within the Celo ecosystem. Similarly, the (“KlimaDAO,” 2023) KlimaDAO protocol, founded in 2021, tokenizes real-world carbon assets into liquid Klima tokens, establishing a DAO-governed, transparent market for carbon neutrality, which has $4 billion in total transaction volume.

Social features has always been a weakness of Web3, and (Syndicate, 2022) contends that it’s not enough to build decentralized financial rails to democratize wealth creation; crypto investing must also redesign the social networks around capital. The Web3-based attempt to achieve these goals is called DAO or Decentralised Autonomous Organizations, which allow wallet holders to collaborate and vote on issues. (BlockChannel, 2017) defines a DAO as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization on blockchain, using smart contracts and token-weighted voting to enable permissionless, community-driven governance. In the world of Web3 and cryptocurrencies, smart contracts make it possible for DAOs to also pool member resources for investing. Because of the on-chain nature where transactions are visible to anyone, they may be seen as more transparent. DAOs an be used in a similar way to Hedge funds; a DAO can have a treasury, with a shared multi-sign wallet (similar to a bank account) from which investments can be made together. Typically DAOs have a voting system to make decision while Hedge Funds may be more centrally controlled. A notable example, (Carra Wu & Chris Dixon, 2021) details how the Friends With Benefits (FWB) DAO transformed consumers into investors by requiring an application review and token buy-in, granting members governance rights and meaningful ownership in a token-gated community. With a specific sustainability focus, (“Trees for the Future,” 2023) DAOs to enable concerted action towards climate goals using the pooled resources in a treasury, a blockchain (on-chain), similar to how hedge funds work.

(Ian Bezek, 2021) argues that DAOs and governance tokens could replace stock exchanges and corporations by using programmable blockchains for digital ownership and control of assets registered in on-chain distributed databases. (Nathan Reiff, 2023) explains how DAOs use smart contracts and cryptographic voting to manage organizations without a central authority; some advantages include transparency and community ownership, while existing challenges of being in a legal gray zones (one still needs to register a legal entity) and risks of security hacks, are real. (Rehash: A Web3 Podcast, 2022) insists that people and not just code must be the north star in Web3 design frameworks to achieve a truly human-centered Web3. Yet, the first wave of Web3 users were privacy-conscious and wouldn’t answer questions, making it challenging to create good personas, making design difficult (Crabb, 2023). While somewhat out of date, (Ray, 2023) offers a comprehensive review mapping the Web3 technology landscape which serves as a good introduction. Finally, (“Empowering Digital Asset Banking,” n.d.) notes it’s not only retail investor entering the crypto world, large institutions are doing the same, with tokenisation, crypto custody and asset‑management increasingly becoming a part of mainstream finance.

(Aikman, 2022) proposes using a DAO called OpenESG to cut opacity and greenwashing, with a Decentralized Expert Council and Community Voting to build transparent rating methodologies, while validator bounties would incentivize crowdsourcing and verification of data, making every scoring step is auditable; high scorers could gain direct access to sustainable financing, turning ESG excellence into tangible regenerative outcomes. While the ideas remain, the OpenESG organization itself has defunct for unknown reasons, leaving one to wonder if these ideas are workable.

A lot of financial tooling from traditional finance (called trad-fi in crypto circles) has been replicated using blockchains and related technologies. However, the legislation affecting Hedge Funds and DAOs would be different as hedge funds are an older and more established financial tool whereas DAOs still fall in somewhat of a gray area. For example, in the U.S.a federal judge ruled that crypto collectives (crypto investment clubs) like Lido DAO are general partnerships liable for unregistered securities offerings (Investment Clubs and Collectives Deprecation FAQ, n.d.). In order to overcome these legal hurdles, VC-backed startups have launched platforms to support a new generation of DAOs, providing regulatory navigation and smart-contract tooling that broaden blockchain dependencies beyond DeFi protocols (Lucas Matney, 2022).

Oracles provide the intersection between finance and real world sustainability data. A data oracle is the concept of a source of real-world data which can be ingested through an application programming interface (API) to a blockchain system. There are many databases of sustainability information which could serve as an oracle for carbon labeling, packaging, transportation, consumption, and waste. For example, crypto crop insurance provided by IBISA Network uses blockchain triggers and satellite data to offer transparent, automated payouts for farmers facing weather-related risks (IBISA Network – Enabling the Next Generation of Insurance for Agriculture, n.d.). While (Caldarelli et al., 2020) notes it’s a challenge to ensure the accuracy and trustworthiness of real-world data from Oracles, the largest Oracle provider ChainLink founder Sergey Nazarov believes the collaboration of oracles and blockchains can make carbon credits more trustworthy. (Brady Dale, 2021; Chainlink, 2022).

Divestment: Supporting Sustainability by Avoiding the Worst Polluting Companies

Divesting is the inverse of investing. If no sustainable alternative can be found, at least taking one’s money out from polluting companies signals one’s green preferences. “Sustainable development requires more investment in sustainable companies and less in unsustainable firms.” (Van Zanten & Rein, 2023). In institutional finance, the Norwegian $1.3T USD sovereign wealth fund (the world’s largest) started a divestment trend in 2016 by divesting first from coal following by divesting from oil, gas and coal extracting companies (Ben Martin, 2017; Holger, 2019). Their plan to reach net zero CO2e nonetheless only targets 2050. Furthermore, who would be the counterpart for such large transactions. The fund also announced divesting from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, however has yet to sell any shares citing lack of buyers on the Moscow stock market. Even with divesting from oil and has, Norway Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) still adheres to the Markowitz’s Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), with enough diversification between assets (Papaioannou & Rentsendorj, 2015).

University of California also followed suit with divestment of its $126B USD portfolio from oil and gas. Other large university endowments, such as managed by Yale, Stanford and MIT are in decision gridlock.

While divesting makes news headlines, even divestment by large institutional investors, such as the Norwegian National Pension Fund (GPFG), has a negligible effect on the heavy polluters’ business; by the same logic, it can be deducted, the financial effect of retail investors divesting, is meaningless. If retail investors act in aggregate, the reputational effect needs further research. “To halt climate change, some investors have decided to divest from fossil fuel companies. Reviewing the literature suggests that divestment from fossil fuel has limited financial consequences; it slightly increases divested firms’ risk and their cost of capital, while reducing divested firms’ market value,” is the pessimistic conclusion by (Plantinga & Scholtens, 2024).

By extension, it may sound feasible that divesting could have a meaningful impact on companies if a large numbers of retail investors collaborate on ‘banning’ the company to send a message to the board, yet in practice small individual divestments may be neglible to governance decisions.

The Economics of Decoupling: Attempts to Disconnect Economic Growth from Eco-Degradation

Is the “eco” in ecology and economy the same? Oîkos, the Greek word for “household”, seeds two modern disciplines: ecology studies how the home works; economy sets the rules for managing it. The two have drifted apart: one guarding planetary health, the other chasing growth. This chapter reunites them by asking: how do we measure prosperity without wrecking our home?

Post-AI Economics

People around the world are discussing how traditional economics can adjust to the abundance provided by AI, known as Post-AI, Post-Labor, or even Post-Scarcity economics. Last year, the Seoul AI Summit pushed for voluntary safety standards to manage systemic risks while the French AI Summit tackled energy consumption and environmental costs, highlighting the need to embed AI sustainability into economic planning, regulatory frameworks, and corporate accountability (Hern, 2024; Milmo, 2024). More recently, the Anthropic Economic Index tried to capture how AI impacts human work and economics in general, noting that among millions of work tasks submitted to Claude - studied as anonymized conversations using a privacy-preserving clustering tool Clio, separately described in (Tamkin et al., 2024) -, that 43% of the work could be categorized as automation and 57% as augmentation of human economic activities (Handa et al., 2025). At the same time, economists’ predictions of the future impact of AI are far from uniform, for instance MIT economist Daron Acemoglu estimating that in the U.S. only 5% of the tasks can be profitably automated and AI will only contribute a modest 1.1% to the GDP until 2035 (Acemoglu, 2024).

Econometrics: The Many Ways to Measure an Economy

Econometrics is the science of measuring the economy.

The creator of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) metric in 1934 Simon Kuznets said: “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by GDP…Goals for ‘more’ growth should specify of what and for what” (United States. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce et al., 1934).

GDP was the culmination of previous work by many authors, beginning with William Petty in the 17th century (Rockoff, 2020). This long journey underlines how a metric about a complex system such as the economy is continuous work in progress. There has been ongoing work to create improved metrics such as the the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Human Development Index (HDI), Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), Green GDP, Inclusive Wealth Index, and others (Anielski, 2001; Bleys & Whitby, 2015; Kovacic & Giampietro, 2015).

Measuring wellbeing in addition to GDP and the metric should including resiliency dashboards, to to visualize metrics beyond GDP and they are an integral part of country reports (GreensEFA, 2023). Similarly, the doughnut (donut) economics (more below) model calls for a “dashboard of indicators” (TED, 2018).

The National Academies links public health outcomes (air quality, water safety, and food systems) with sustainability actions, calling for an integrated cross‐sector strategy to protect community well‐being (Public Health Linkages with Sustainability, 2013).(Guidotti, 2015) argues environmental quality foundational to public health and urges embedding sustainability principles across healthcare systems and policies; in order to have healthy communities, we need clean air, pure water, and toxin‐free surroundings.

The Evolution of Economic Metrics

Traditionally, the true cost of products is hidden. The work is hidden. The first two decades of the 21st century have seen increasing economic thinking, looking to challenge, improve and upgrade capitalism to match our current environmental, social, and technological situation, often called New Economics. Some of these include behavioral economics, sustainable capitalism, regenerative capitalism, doughnut economics, ecological economics, blue economy, degrowth, attention economy, gift economy, intent economy, among others. There’s no lack of published books on changing capitalism, which goes to show there’s readership for these ideas. Build a new economic theory is out of scope for my thesis design, however I’ll focus on the parts of economic theory I believe are relevant for interaction design-ing for sustainability.

• (Cuppini et al., 2022) historical overview of the development of capitalism from linear Fordism through platform economy and logistics’ revolution which allows for circular economies to happen in a city.

There are those looking for new metrics. One of the first innovators, already in 1972, was Buthan, with the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH), which in turn inspired the UN, decades later, in 2012, to create the International Wellbeing and Happiness Conference and the International Happiness Day(Kamei et al., 2021; Ribeiro & Lemos Marinho, 2017). The World Bank talks about the comprehensive GDD+ metrics in its Changing the Wealth of Nations report (World Bank, 2021).

The Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) countries (New Zealand, Iceland, Finland, Scotland, Wales) as well as the EU and Canada, started the coalition in 2018 looking to involve more broad-based metrics in developing their societies (CEPR, 2022; David Suzuki Foundation, 2021; Ellsmoor, 2019; Scottish Government, 2022; Wellbeing Economy Alliance, 2022). (Giacalone et al., 2022) looks at wellbeing of Italian communities and proposes a new composite index. There’s also work ongoing on macroeconomic modeling, aiming to create a digital twin of the economy. Some of the most complex computer models of the economy include the Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal Model (GIMF) (Laxton et al., 2010) and DSGE (Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium).

Hidden Costs: Pricing Externalities

Markets misprice “home maintenance.”

Co-founder of Generation Capital with 50 Billion under management David Blood “the most sifinifcat thing we can do as capital allocators is to price in those difficult to price externalities” Liebreich (2025)

In the simplest sense, prices do not capture all costs. “Consumption, production, and investment decisions of individuals, households, and firms often affect people not directly involved in the transactions” (Helbling, 2012). Externalities as an economic concept was implied by Alfred Marshall, one of the founders of neoclassical economics, in his 1890 treatise “Principles of Economics,” and further developed by Arthur Cecil Pigou in his 1920 book “The Economics of Welfare” (Marshall, 1997; Pigou, 2002). As of 2023, the value of unpriced externalities which are not included in the GDP is 7.3 trillion USD per year (Trucost & TEEB for Business Coalition, 2023). The award-winning economist Mariana Mazzucato argues in (Gupta, 2020) we should include more into how we value unpaid labor, relating to the social (S in ESG) (Mazzucato, 2018) as part of our metrics.

Ecological Economics Builds Upon Classical Economics

While Adam Smith is most famous for his concept of the invisible hand first appearing in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and further developed in his seminal work The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, his writings also highlight the interdependence of economic actors, who through specialization increase productivity, but also increasingly dependent on each another as well as the role of empathy in individual actions (Atal et al., 2024).

Ecological economics doesn’t necessarily argue with the foundation of classical economics, rather ecological economics finds the classical economics model and by extension neoclassical economics are incomplete, ignoring the physical limits of natural resources. Ecological economics draws attention to the interdependence of economy and the ecosystem; there are physical limits to economic growth on a planet with finite resources.

The biggest point of contention is the necessity of economic growth. The founder of ecological economics Herman Daly was talking about prosperity without growth more than two decades ago, focusing on the diminishing natural resources (Daly, 1997). Daly was teaching economics to undergraduates at Louisina State University when he grew dissatisfied with the standard model of the market, which didn’t include any inputs (resources) or outputs (pollution), and later modeled his work by placing the economy within the larger system of the ecosphere (Ketcham, 2023). More recently.(Jackson, 2009, 2017) have expanded on these ideas with recipes for a post-growth world, making the ideas seem more tangible and precise, yet mostly untested in the real world.

Writing in 1973, E. F. Schumacher argued economics overlooks both natural resource depletion and environmental degradation and draws on religion (particularly Buddhism) to suggest a simpler way of life:

“Simplicity and non-violence are obviously closely related. The optimal pattern of consumption, producing a high degree of human satisfaction by means of a relatively low rate of consumption, allows people to live without great pressure and strain and to fulfil the primary injunction of Buddhist teaching: ‘Cease to do evil; try to do good.’” (Schumacher, 1985)

New economic thinkers are asking how can economic growth and sustainability be compatible. Some even ask if economic growth itself is the wrong goal? (Diduch, 2020). Lewis Hyde’s book “The Gift” argues creativity thrives in “gift economies”; reciprocity is more important for creativity than market exchanges (Hyde, 2006).

(Yüksel et al., 2023) criticizes excessive financialization where the real economy and financial markets disconnected, blaming it for the the 2008 economic crisis, proposing a new index for participation finance aiming to ground the financial economy in the real economy; rooted in Islamic banking, participation finance avoids highly speculative activities, which are seen as exploitative, looking to promote stability, transparency, and fairness.

Degrowth is the most famous contender in that branch of economics. Is Decoupling Economic Growth and CO2e Emissions Possible? Is Green Growth an oxymoron? No-one knows as it hasn’t been done before. Degrowth proponents are pessimistic it’s possible to decouple greenhouse gas emissions from economic growth; historical data shows does not show any decoupling (Vadén et al., 2020).

The original Ramsey model introduced by Frank P. Ramsey in 1928, becoming foundational for traditional economic growth theory, does not assume infinite economic growth (Attanasio, 2015). (Marc Germain, 2016) has adopted the Ramsey Model and introduced constraints such as pollution, distinguishing renewable and non-renewable capital.

(Jackson, 2017) limits to growth update shows that absolute decoupling of GDP growth from environmental impact at the speed needed for climate targets is effectively impossible; prosperity should be redefined around wellbeing, sufficiency and resilience rather than perpetual economic expansion.

Doughnut Economics and Regenerative Capitalism

Doughnut Economics, introduced in the eponymous book uses a simple visualization of a doughnut (donut in American English) to help us grasp the big picture of the economy embedded inside the physical and social worlds (Raworth, 2017). Raworth calls to move beyond GDP growth, building economies that are regenerative and distributive by design, fitting human needs within planetary limits (De Balie, 2018). The Doughnut Economics model allows one to see the social shortfall and ecological overshoot of nations at the same time (Fanning et al., 2021). The doughnut concept is simple and deep at the same time, a useful as social object to enable starting conversations with people from all walks of life, independent of their politics leanings. As Raworth calls it, it’s a “self-portrait of humanity in the beginning of the 21st century”. Combining the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) inside the doughnut and the Planetary Boundaries (Earth’s ecological ceiling) outside the doughnut, leaves a space inside the donut represents a state of equilibrium and balance on spaceship Earth.

In some ways this Doughnut Economics can be described as a movement. Doughnut Action Labs enable local communities to build local donuts customized to local problems. While the ideas have not yet been implemented on a country-level, smaller scale doughnut economics’ success stories have inspired cities to take a comprehensive view of the doughnut of their own city with several EU cities adopting the vision (Jordan G. Teicher, 2021). While critics say doughnut economics would expand the role of the government (Horwitz, 2017), doughnut practitioners in Brussels believe everything can be adapted to the place and context (BrusselsDonut, 2022; Oikos Denktank, 2021).

The city of Amsterdam is developing shorter food chains (which save CO_2e) and linking residents with food production and reconnecting people to the food which foster collaboration in the community (Circle Economy, 2021). Amsterdam has also built comprehensive dashboards called the Circular Economy Monitor which makes it easy for anyone to see the progress being made towards the Dutch goal to be a circular economy by 2050 (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2022; Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat, 2019).

From [@circleeconomyKeynoteIlektraKouloumpi2021].

Shortening Food Chains in Amsterdam
Spatial planning for food place-making in the city
Circular agriculture
Regionally produced food
Collaboration between chain members
Food education

In his 2015 paper Regenerative Capitalism, John Fullerton, an investor and a capital markets and derivatives expert, builds his economic theory on the ideas of Club of Rome and the Limits to Growth (Meadows & Club of Rome, 1972) as well as taking inspiration from R. Buckminster Fuller.

“Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerating system. If we discover the laws that govern this system and live synergistically within them, sustainability will follow and humankind will be a success.” (Fuller, 1983)

“[H]uman civilization is embedded in the biosphere,” Fullerton’s ideas aim to balance efficiency with resiliency so the whole system doesn’t become brittle and break (Confino, 2015; John Fullerton, 2011, 2022). While regenerative capitalism recognizes the need for economic growth it also deems “[t]he quality of growth matters” (“Regenerative Capitalism,” 2023). For example, he cites the example of Triodos Bank which already in the 1980s focused on sustainable banking championing responsibility, transparency, and business ethics. A member of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, Triodos finances projects in nature preservation and restoration (GABV, 2023).

Decarbonization Scenarios

The possibility of decoupling economic growth from CO₂e emissions (also known as decarbonizing the economy or eco-economic decoupling) or is hotly debated (pun intended) among scientists. (Keyßer & Lenzen, 2021) provides several scenarios for low, medium, and high levels of decoupling titled Degrowth, IPCC, and Dec-Extreme.

Looking a the United Kingdom, (harrisson, 2019) concludes UK’s CO_2e emissions have fallen 43% from 1990 to 2017 through the use of less carbon-intensive energy sources and argues for moderate policies in (Hausfather & Peters, 2020).

Meanwhile the cumulative CO_2e emissions trend in the UK in the same time-frame show the historic responsibility of UK (Global Carbon Budget, 2023).

CO₂e emissions and GDP growth per capita follow a similar path in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) as well as in Vietnam and Somalia (Raihan et al., 2024; Viana Espinosa De Oliveira & Moutinho, 2022; Warsame et al., 2024).

In practice, there’s ample evidence from several countries suggesting moving to renewal energy brings environmental benefits. In Bangladesh, (Amin et al., 2022) suggests “removing fossil fuel subsidies and intra-sectoral electricity price distortions coupled with carbon taxes provides the highest benefits” for both the economy and the environment. In other words, green energy is a win-win solution, for both the evironmental health and financial wealth.

There are still low-hanging fruits to be picked in terms of energy efficiency. (Devlin & Yang, 2022) analysed regional steel supply chains between Australia and Japan, finding that co-locating steel manufacturing with renewable energy sources would provide the highest energy efficiency, reducing energy consumption by up to 45%; moreover, a carbon tax of 43-123 USD per tonne of CO₂e would mitigate the “green premium”. (Stefan Klebert, 2022) CEO of GEA, a large producer of machinery and heat pumps, highlights that heating and cooling account for between 50-90% of energy use in processing plants; deploying state-of-the-art heat pump technology can half CO₂e emissions; large-scale carbon-neutral manufacturing is already possible with existing technologies.

One example is Innocent’s Rotterdam juice plant, which operates a carbon-neutral facility (in terms or energy use for processing) by integrating heat pumps to capture and reuse waste heat across the production process; the article does not cover emissions from the juice source materials (Innocent Opens £200m Carbon-Neutral Factory in Rotterdam - Investment Monitor, n.d.). Palsgaard, a large producer of emulsifiers and stabilisers for food industries, reports similar results of carbon-neutral production, through using advanced heat-management and green energy (hydro-power in Denmark) sources (CO2-neutral Factories, n.d.). The Green Transition Denmark think-thank has published a report calculating that the complete decarbonization of Denmark by 2040 would cost about 6.2 billion Danish krone (close to $1 Billion USD) per year, achieving full net-zero emissions, full electrification of road transport, electrification of 75% of industry and 30% of heating, capping biomass use at 10.5 PJ (petajoules) to boost forest carbon storage by 1.6 Mt CO₂, expand forests by 290 000 ha, and reduce farmland by 34%, while producing 90 PJ of green fuels (Møller & Tang, 2024).

Already in 2019, Alois Müller built an example “Green Factory” in Ungerhausen, where a 1.1 MW rooftop photovoltaic system supplies 2/3 of the electricity (feeding excess power to the grid), combined with a heat and power boiler powered by biogas and pellets (note: pellets have become very controversial as their sustainability highly depends on the source material), a 100000 liter buffer tank for waste heat, and a 230 kWh lithium battery (VDI Zentrum Ressourceneffizienz, 2020).

Advances in sensors, AI, and robotics, increasingly enable lights-out manufacturing, which leverages full automation, producing 24/7, with minimal to no human interaction, while increasing productivity and efficiency (Eric fogg, 2020).

Reducing the Gap Between Climate Science and Climate Economics

William Nordhaus won a Nobel Prize in 2018 for attempting to combine climate change and economics in a single, integrated assessment model, named Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (DICE), however his predictions are considered inaccurate by climate scientists, underestimating the risk of catastrophic warming, tippings points, and the probability of higher temperatures leading to mass death (Jones & Steffen, 2019; Kemp et al., 2022; Ketcham, 2023; Stern et al., 2022; Stern, 2022; Xu & Ramanathan, 2017).

Energy and climate change economist Noah Kaufman says economists don’t understand climate and climate scientists don’t understand economics; and calls out economic calculations which try to estimate climate damages over hundreds of years or find a price for climate equilibrium, as nonsensical (dessler2, 2024). Instead, in a recent paper, co-written with another Nobel prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, they argue economics can solve climate change though a risk-management approach for policy support, focusing on lowering climate risk by achieving net-zero carbon emissions (Stiglitz et al., 2024).

While Nordhaus has been criticized for his numbers, the general idea of his early book titled “The Climate Casino” doesn’t disagree. Nordhaus himself likens the current trajectory of climate change to humanity entering a “climate casino,” where we’re is gambling with the planet’s future (Nordhaus, 2013). Written a decade later, Nordhaus asks if we can still exit the casino, and is much more pessimistic than in his early work (Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), 2023).

Although over 100 different scientific journals now publish work on sustainability economics, the field remains highly fragmented, with little interaction between research clusters. A bibliometric study of 1987–2013 publications found 11 largely self‑contained research clusters, with minimal cross‑citation; for example the Nordhaus‑style integrated‑assessment‑modeling literature had almost no overlap with another prominent researcher, Elinor Ostrom, whose work focuses on commons governance within sustainability economics (Drupp et al., 2020).

Kaufman decries the lack of real-world data in the economic-climate models, and believes the simple assumptions should be replaced with much more complex scientific analysis (dessler2, 2024).

(T.-P. Wang & Teng, 2022) conducted a systematic comparison of 3 leading integrated assessment models (IAMs) to quantify climate change damages globally and for China specifically, valued as percentage of GDP; the models are as follows FUND (Framework for Uncertainty, Negotiation and Distribution), RICE (Regional Integrated model of Climate and the Economy) and PAGE (Policy Analysis of the Greenhouse Effect)

Quantifying climate damage scenarios using integrated assessment models [@wangMultimodelAssessmentClimate2022].

Climage Damage	Value	Context
Climate damage per 1 °C warming (China)	≈ 1.5 % of China’s GDP	Average estimate across FUND, RICE and PAGE
Climate damage per 1 °C warming (global)	≈ 0.7 % of world GDP	Average estimate across FUND, RICE and PAGE
Average reduction in climate damage: 2 °C target (China)	93 % reduction	vs business-as-usual in average-case scenario
Average reduction in climate damage: 2 °C target (global)	87 % reduction	vs business-as-usual in average-case scenario
Worst-case reduction in climate damage: 2 °C target (China)	80 % reduction	vs business-as-usual in the worst-case damage scenario
Worst-case reduction in climate damage: 2 °C target (global)	84 % reduction	vs business-as-usual in the worst-case damage scenario

Efforts to Curb Greenwashing: Data-Driven Benchmarks and the Fight for Transparency

Sustainable Investing is Based on Data. Greenwashing is a large detractor from environmental action as it’s difficult to know what is sustainable and what is not. Greenwashing Disturbs Sustainable Capital Allocation. Greenwashing erodes trust. Greenwashing has a negative Impact on Credibility. The promise of ESG is to counter misinformation with transparency. Environmental Information Disclosure (EID). Marketing - Sustainability Marketing. Countering Misinformation with Transparency.

Corporate hypocrisy is an important blocker of sustainable action. Both the European Commission and the Chair of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Gary Gensler have called for more legislation to curb business greenwashing practices. “If it’s easy to tell if milk is fat-free by just looking at the nutrition label, it might be time to make it easier to tell if”green” or “sustainable” funds are really what they say they are” says Gensler (US Securities and Exchange Commission, 2022). EU regulation for standardizing sustainability reporting is called the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) entered into force in 2023 and is being gradually ramped up until 2027.

Green investing only makes sense if it’s possible to distinguish sustainable investments from not sustainable ones. Humans feel as if choosing green is useless and give up. Sustainabile investing is firstly about changes in legislation which set stricter sustainability standards on companies (as discussed above). Secondly, increased transparency, new metrics, and new tools make it feasible to differentiate more sustainable companies from less sustainable ones.

Upcoming EU greenwashing legislation hopes to curb misleading communications by companies. “Make benchmark methodologies more transparent when it comes to ESG & put forward standards for the methodology of low-carbon and ESG benchmarks in EU” (European Commission, 2019). EU’s Ecodesign Regulation for Sustainable Products (ESPR) requires mandatory documentation of environmental impacts for all product categories, bans self-declared green claims by, and sets out specific design criteria, including durability, reparability, recycled content, remanufacturing, lifecycle impacts, and waste prevention (Nastaraan Vadoodi, 2022). Until new legislation is ramped up to shift from linear to circular product development, building consumer awareness is crucial as currently most emission-reduction programs are voluntary and thus affected only by consumer demand (André & Valenciano-Salazar, 2022). Greenwashing is widespread in company social media communications (Geoffrey Supran, 2022). A number of new AI-based tools aim to find instances of greenwashing. ClimateBert AI finds rampant greenwashing (Bingler et al., 2021; Sahota, 2021).

While the EU has proposed legislation to curb greenwashing, EU climate policy itself has been criticized for greenwashing. Sometimes greenwashing comes under legislative protection, due to oversight or private business interests and lobbists (Frédéric Simon, 2020; Kira Taylor, 2021). (Booth, 2022) describes how wood pellets may be counted as an sustaiable energy source, even though they cause deforestation:

“A recent investigation shows illegal logging of protected areas in eastern European countries that supplies residential wood pellets in Italy. Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands are importing pellets from Estonia, where protected areas are logged for pellets and the country has lost its forest carbon sink, despite large-scale wood pellet plants being certified ‘sustainable’ by the Sustainable Biomass Program” - (Booth, 2022).

While new EU legislation for deforestation-free products may eventually solve this issue (or at least mitigate the worst outcomes), the application of these laws is delayed as of writing (European Commission, 2024; Parrish, 2025). In the US, a large wood pellet producer Enviva filed for bankruptcy protection after being sued for misleading the public about the sustainability of its products, yet managed to survive and is now again expanding its biomass business; likewise, Drax Group, another large pellet producer managed continues business after a public backlash (Catanoso, 2024; Diver, 2025; Millard, 2025).

In recycling systems,(Purkiss et al., 2022) highlights the confusion between compostable and biodegradable plastics and public misunderstanding what happens to these plastics when they reach the landfill: “[m]ost plastics marketed as”home compostable” don’t actually work, with as much as 60% failing to disintegrate after six months”. Shopping bags marketed as biodegradable don’t show deterioration after 3 years in salt-water sea environment (Napper & Thompson, 2019).

Anti-Greenwashing Efforts in Taiwan

The Taiwanese Financial Supervisory Commission, the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, and the Ministry of the Interior collaborated on the “Reference Guidelines for the Identification of Sustainable Economic Activities” to encourage the financial industry to assist enterprises in their transition to sustainable carbon reduction” (金管會 & Financial Supervisory Commission, 2022)

The Taiwanese Corporate Governance Sustainable Development Roadmap published by the Corporate Governance Reform Task Force established by the Executive Yuan (Taiwanese Government), identifies lack of diversity and independence in boards and insufficient ESG and financial information transparency as key issues (Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation, 2023).

The Taiwanese Green Citizens Action Alliance published a comprehensive report in 2024 tracking Taiwanese Corporate Sustainability Reporting focused directly at fighting corporate greenwashing (綠色公民行動聯盟, 2024).

Product Databases as a Precursor for Traceability and Supply Chain Mapping

In order to consider the sustainability on a product level, there should be a directory of all the world’s products - a world product database. GS1 is the organization responsible for issuing EAN/UPC barcodes found on most consumer products worldwide (GS1, n.d.). However, while the UPC stands for Universal Product Code, there is no truly centralized, authoritative database of all UPCs, which has led to duplication and inconsistency across products sharing the same codes, especially with the rise of e-commerce marketplaces (Semantics3, 2017). As early as 2016, (Håkon Bogen, 2016) raised questions whether a global database of all EAN (European Article Number) barcoded products could be created. Barcodes help identify products within supply chains and retail systems, but they do not alone create a central product registry. On a basic level, standardized product codes ensures product inventory, traceability, automated checkout, and support global trade. All of the world’s products already are subject to one or another standard and although they are not uniform, some documentation does exist about every product.

A number of specialized product databases have been created to fill specific needs. The Open Product Database maintained by Datakick (Datakick, n.d.) aimed to crowdsource product information but faced limitations and is no longer widely active. WIPO GREEN, the global green technology database, catalogs environmentally sustainable innovations (WIPO GREEN, n.d.). The World Packaging Database provides detailed information about product packaging worldwide, important for understanding material impacts (“Packaging World,” n.d.).

In a similar vein, Konrad (n.d.) imagines the possibility of an internet-wide directory of purchasable products, akin to how platforms like Spotify have made nearly all of the world’s music easily searchable and accessible. However, despite the obvious need, attempts to build such directories have faced significant challenges. For example, the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Open Product Data initiative (“Open Product Data” (n.d.)) was eventually shut down, highlighting how difficult it is to maintain open, comprehensive, and up-to-date product information at a global scale.

While some infrastructure exists, including bar and QR-codes, standards, and partial databases, the world still lacks a unified, reliable, open-access product database. Building such a system could be improve sustainability assessments, supply chain transparency, and informed consumer choices at the global scale.

Indices, Certifications and Sustainability Standards Enable Product Comparisons

Research shows certification does matter. In Europe, consumers are willing to pay more for bio-based products “72% of Europeans are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly products. The study identifies a”green premium” and a “certified green premium,” indicating increased WTP for bio-based and certified bio-based products” (Morone et al., 2021). Particulary in Italy, a study of consumer awareness of sustainable supply chains shows Italian consumers have a strong preference for antibiotic-free meat (Mazzocchi et al., 2022).

Open ESG data platform Wikirate currently lists 4316 different metrics, essentially questions which companies should answer (Wikirate, 2025).

Companies assess customer’s credit score to decide credit-worthiness, however inversely, how can customers rate companies? Indices make comparing companies possible. There are many-many indexes, scoring systems, ratings, certifications, etc. Most sustainable companies. Make a database?

Sustainability indices need transparency and standardization (Bolognesi et al., 2024).

Based on Corporate Knights data (Corporate Knights, 2024)

Energy productivity and carbon productivity are a measures of how energy intensive a product is per unit of productivity. There are people working on improving efficieny; for example (J. Luo et al., 2022) suggests using reinforcement learning to reduce energy use in cooling systems.

Energy productivity

Carbon productivity

There are many standards. (International Trade Centre, 2022) currently lists 334 different sustainability standards: “Towards a meaningful economy” “The world’s largest database for sustainability standards”, “We provide free, accessible, comprehensive, verified and transparent information on over 300 standards for environmental protection, worker and labor rights, economic development, quality and food safety, as well as business ethics.”

Type Certificate	Rating System B Corporation	What it does B Impact Assessment
	ESG
Certificate	Fair Trade
Ranking	Responsible Business Index	@EstonianResponsibleBusiness Responsible business index
Index	Greenly	Greenly Decarborization Index @greenlyGreenlyIntroducesClimate2023
	Science-Based Targets	Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) provides step-by–step guidance per economic sector help companies get started with meeting climate criteria and emission reduction requirements.
Certificate	Green Web Foundation	@GreenWebFoundation2023 For example, the Green Web Foundation certifies how sustainable is the web hosting used by websites. Testing website CO2 emissions @wholegraindigitaHowDoesIt2023
	Leafscore for product	@leafscoreLeafScoreLeadingOnline2023
Rating	Ethical consumer ratings	@EthicalConsumerEthical2018
	1% For the Planet
Standard	Climate Neutral Certified Standard
Standard	The Conservation Alliance	[@climateneutralcertifiedClimateNeutralStandards2023].
Index	Impakter Sustainability Inde

There are many different certifications for sustainable brands. Existing rankings include fashion brand ratings and ethical shopping. The Top 100 Consumer Brands report showing brands ranked by consumer sustainability preferences from the largest consumer goods companies (“Top 100 Consumer Goods Companies of 2021,” n.d.).

The Ethical Consumer Research Association active since 1989 publishes a magazine and keeps an active list of boycotts, which currently (as of May 15, 2025) includes 47 boycott campaigns (About Ethical Consumer Ethical Consumer, 2018; Boycotts List Ethical Consumer, 2018).

#	Target / Product	Category	Called by (lead organisation)	Year launched
1	Airbnb	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2016
2	Amazon	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2024
3	Amazon (tax-avoidance)	Tax Avoidance	Ethical Consumer	2012
4	AXA	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2019
5	Barclays Bank	Human Rights	Palestine Solidarity Campaign	2024
6	Booking.com	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2024
7	Burger King	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2024
8	Chevron	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2022
9	Coca-Cola	Human Rights	Friends of Al-Aqsa	2014
10	Coconut milk (from Thailand)	Animal Rights	PETA	2022
11	Crufts dog show	Animal Rights	PETA	2014
12	Disney / Marvel	Human Rights	BDS National Committee & allies	2023
13	Ecover	Animal Testing	Naturewatch Foundation	2018
14	eToro	Human Rights	Tech for Palestine	2024
15	Expedia	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2024
16	Get Your Guide	Animal Rights	World Animal Protection	2023
17	Google	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2024
18	Groupon	Animal Rights	World Animal Protection	2023
19	Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HP)	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2012
20	Israeli dates	Human Rights	American Muslims for Palestine	2012
21	Israeli produce in supermarkets	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2005
22	JCB	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2024
23	Kellogg’s	Environment	GMO-Free USA	2012
24	L’Oréal	Animal Testing	Naturewatch Foundation	2000
25	“Made in China” goods	Human Rights	Friends of Tibet & others	2020
26	McDonald’s	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2024
27	Method	Animal Testing	Naturewatch Foundation	2018
28	Mitie	Human Rights	Women for Refugee Women	2023
29	Nestlé (baby-milk)	Human Rights	Baby Milk Action	1977
30	Nestlé (water extraction)	Environment	Lakota People’s Law Project	2018
31	Papa John’s	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2023
32	Pizza Hut	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2023
33	Russia (national boycott)	Oppressive Regimes	Government of Ukraine	2022
34	Sabra Hummus	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2010
35	Siemens	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2022
36	SodaStream	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2012
37	Starbucks	Habitats & Resources	Lakota People’s Law Project	2023
38	Tesco Bank	Human Rights	Palestine Solidarity Campaign	2024
39	Texaco	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2022
40	Trip.com	Animal Rights	World Animal Protection	2023
41	Tui	Animal Rights	World Animal Protection	2023
42	Twitter / X	Human Rights	Stop Toxic Twitter coalition	2022
43	Unilever (Russia operations)	Human Rights	B4Ukraine	2024
44	Volvo (AB Volvo trucks)	Human Rights	BDS National Committee	2024
45	Wendy’s	Workers’ Rights	Coalition of Immokalee Workers	2005
46	Wix	Human Rights	Tech for Palestine	2023
47	World Wildlife Fund (WWF)	Human Rights	WTF WWF coalition	2020

OpenCorporates attempts to map all the companies around the world - “the largest open database of companies in the world,” - as per their tagline, launched a collaboration with the UNSD (United Nations Statistics Division) and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) to close the information gap on the 500 largest multinational enterprises (termed MNEs) to tackle the problem (as per their tweet on X, formerly know as Twitter): “Hidden data is a big problem, and it’s limiting our understanding of the world’s largest #Multinational enterprises” (Communications, 2023; opencorporates [@opencorporates], 2024)

WikiRate, started in 2010, is a tool for checking green credentials and “[t]he largest open registry of corporate sustainability data in the world” (Mills et al., 2016; WikiRate, 2023). Transparency is about culture but also mechanisms and tools, which is why WikiRate defines Data Sharing Archetypes (WikiRate, 2021).

Type	Example
Transparency Accountability Advocate
Compliance Data Aggregator
Data Intelligence Hub
Worker Voice Tool	@caravanstudiosStrengthenYourWorker2022: “Worker Connect”
Traceability tool	trustrace.com
Open data platform
Knowledge sharing platform	business-humanrights.org

At the 2023 Scottish AI Summit, practitioners demoed how AI pipelines can analyze modern slavery statements to flag missing disclosures, suggesting how humans and machines can “scale corporate accountability” like never before (Laureen van Breen et al., 2023). Meanwhile, WikiRate’s Facility Checker uncovers living-wage gaps in real time for advocacy organizations (Wikirate, 2022)

Certified B Corporations undergo a rigorous B Impact Assessment (only those scoring 80 or above can earn the B Corp seal) and adhere to strict sustainability practices, which gives as placement in the B Lab global directory. Stakeholders can explore B Corps by country and industry, complete with verified impact scores and performance details. This digital platform is used by over 150 thousand businesses to manage their ESG performance (B Corp, 2025).

Maintaining that trust matters. In 2017, Etsy lost the certification after failing to convert a public company into a public benefit company for fear of shareholder reaction (Alba, 2017; Silverman, 2017). Instead, Etsy launched a campaign to focus on transparency, called “Made Mistakes”, publicly sharing user-experience errors to build trust (“Etsy Made Mistakes, but Its Commitment to Social Responsibility Wasn’t One of Them,” 2017).

Citywealth’s “ESG branding with B-Corps” guide shows how companies can leverage their B Corp status—using consistent logo placement, stakeholder storytelling, and transparent impact data to avoid greenwashing and attract impact-focused investors (Citywealth, 2021). (“Social Enterprises, B Corps, Benefit Companies, ESG,” 2025) explains how the true social and financial value of mission-driven enterprises comes from aligning the documentation with the reality.

Navigating Complexity with Data: Probabilistic Risk-Based Assessment of Sustainability

Sustainability is a complex web of interconnections. To treat nature as commodity is a category mistake: it’s impossible to bring back already destroyed biodiversity which took millennia to develop. Humans create hugely complex systems using technology, instead of simply conserving nature.

• “Companies in industries with the biggest carbon footprints aren’t reporting how their emissions feed into financial risk, according to an analysis of corporate reports by the Carbon Tracker Initiative.” (Frances Schwartzkopff, 2022b)

BeZero is innovating in the voluntary carbon credit market (VCM) by providing risk-scoring, a language financial professionals are accustomed with (BeZero, 2022b; Navigating Net Zero with Co-founder of BeZero Carbon, 2023)

• “Automate your carbon accounting. Make data-driven decisions, across your entire supply chain.” Ratings for mines CarbonChain (n.d.)

• Efforts to connect carbon markets, carbonmark.com

• “We believe that markets for ecosystem assets need to scale urgently, starting with carbon markets. The challenge is to make these instruments as recognizable as tradeable assets, as measurable as financial securities, and as investable as other asset classes. Capital must flow into the environment at scale to deliver climate action.” “Efficient financial markets allocate and manage risk based on effective price mechanisms, and this relies on access to credible information.” BeZero (2022b)

• “Everyone in the market is struggling to effectively price and manage risk.. the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM); a rapidly recovering market, forecasted to grow by as much as 100x, but constrained by a nascent market structure.” “The BCR is a carbon-only expected return model. It utilises a risk-based approach and seeks to give everyone a common language of risk. One that is translatable to that used by the $200 trillion of assets in global financial markets.” BeZero (2022a)

• “climate action as an asset-liability problem”

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