About sustainable investment and toast impact
Welcome to "nouveau monde", a four-handed newsletter to better understand how to make the world better through the lens of retail. This is #51. Yeah, baby...
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Le menu du jour at nouveau monde is about investment and toast.
Today's newsletter is 850 words, a 4-minutes read.
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The state of sustainable investing: exploring the impact politicization is having on ESG, by Pitchbook
by Phil
Christmas is coming soon, and I thought it would be nice to take some distance on ESG vs Retail, and take the opportunity to attend to a free webinar on the investment on ESG.
The three domains of social, environmental and corporate governance are intimately linked to the concept of responsible investment (RI). RI began as a niche investment area, serving the needs of those who wished to invest but wanted to do so within ethically defined parameters. In recent years it has become a much larger proportion of the investment market. By June 2020, flows into U.S. sustainable funds reached $20.9 billion, nearly matching 2019's flows of $21.4 billion. By the end of 2020, flows into U.S. sustainable funds surpassed $51 billion. Globally, sustainable funds held $1.65 trillion in assets at the end of 2020.
Do you know Pitchbook? A capital market company that delivers data, research and technology covering private capital markets including venture capital, private equity and M&A transactions. It is based in Seattle, Washington, with regional offices in London, San Francisco, New York City, Mumbai and Hong Kong, and is definitely the best tool for investors to scan all the information you could need on a startup. Their subscription is quite expensive but it worths it.
There are only two days left to register for their sustainable investing webinar. It’s an opportunity to learn current trends in the sustainable investing ecosystem, including the politicization of ESG, increasing popularity of impact investing and challenges in the sustainable investing ecosystem.
During the event, PitchBook Analysts Hilary Wiek and Annika Villegas will highlight some of the key findings from their 2022 Sustainable Investment Survey, including:
The politicization and polarization surrounding ESG in 2021 and 2022 has had far-reaching impacts on investors and service providers with US-based investments, clients and stakeholders.
Investors and advisors seeking to incorporate ESG into their portfolios have varying goals and philosophies, leading to the proliferation greenwashing allegations.
Lack of clarity around defining and measuring impact outcomes and difficulty benchmarking non-financial goals were frequently cited among the top challenges of sustainable investing.
Be ready on October 27, 10 a.m. PST, 1 p.m. EST. Register here. We might get recordings if you can’t make it.
Vas-y, Wasa
by Anthony
Sorry for our non-french speaking readers but I had to use this title as this ad has been in our French minds for years. So, here is a little gift for the 90’s nostalgics :
I’m not here to talk about history but our future and Wasa had a great idea to let people realize the impact of food in carbon emissions.
The concept is to propose a CO2 detox : one day, you just eat 10 Wasa Crispbreads, drink water and you’ll save 95% of your average daily footprint.
“When you do a CO2 Detox, you live on crackers and water for a day. It will detox the climate footprint of your diet by 95% this day, as a slice of crisp bread has a carbon footprint of only 0.01 kg CO2e. If you manage that challenge, you will, just like after a normal detox, hopefully not be so keen to eat climate-unwise again.
When you have detoxed yourself from CO2 for a day, our hope is that you will want to continue to keep your diet's climate footprint down by starting to eat more climate-smart in the long term.”
We’ve already talked about how food can be a game changer in climate change fight (remember Bonduelle and its veggie meals in #48?) and we know that if we want to make real changes, we need to change people’s mind. I think this is a clever way to do so.
Climate change is an urgent threat to nature, and 1/3 of the world’s CO2 emissions comes from food production. Wasa believe in action now. By lowering, compensating, and inspiring a reduced carbon footprint, based on science, not what looks good. The Wasa brand has achieved climate neutrality by measuring and reducing its carbon footprint from field to shelf, and by compensating to zero any remaining emissions.
To know more, you can visit the dedicated page on Wasa website (in Swedish but Google Translate is your friend).
This campaign is more a communication coup and a way to make people realize that what they eat have a direct impact on climate change but maybe one day, it will become natural to pay attention to its footprint that way.
And as with Phil we were in the “Learning by Doing” thing when we worked together, I’m trying my own CO2 detox today :-)
Bonus track by Anthony
Yes, this one is tricky…
You can access the full nouveau monde playlist here on Spotify.
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