Show Notes
Ciarán Hughes is the CEO of Ethico, Ireland's only ethical finance advising company. Irish pensions are worth billions of euro, a chunk of which is used to invest in fossil fuels and other unethical businesses like weapons etc. We have the power as pension customers to move our pensions away from negative investments to positive ones, and as you'll learn in the episode, there's often no difference in the return!
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[03:05] Ciarán introduces himself and Ethico [06:05] What inspired [09:05] How pensions work [16:55] How much of Irish pension funds are being invested into fossil fuels [25:05] Why you can’t just ask funds to heed your ethical investing requests [28:15] What Ciarán would like to see pension providers do more of [33:10] How the automatic pension enrollment works and what it means for sustainable financing [42:25] A note on banking [44:05] Imagining the future Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Book of Leaves
Kate Doyle is the founder of EcoKinly and current operator of the Cloth Nappy Library Ireland (who we had on the podcast before!). She isn't just trying to sell reusable nappies and menstruation profucts to people, but to normalise the habit in a variety of ways. It was such an interesting chat! Stay up to date with her on Instagram @ecokinly.
Louise Lalor is a circular champion in Clonmel, Tipperary. She has set up a permanent Toy Swap Library in a hub called The Circular Square, where there's also regualr repair cafés and eco community events. The work she does is very inspiring and rightly won an award at the Circular.ie awards! Stay up to date with her on Instagram @louiselalor and find the repair cafés here @clonmelrepaircafe.
Ray Ó Foghlú is the Engagement and Education officer with the charity Hometree. He runs the farmer engagement side of the Illaun Farm-Forest Alliance so we delved into ways in which farmers can access supports to rewild their land in Ireland. We also chat about the art project Dinnseanachas they are currently running. You can donate to their work here or stay up to date with them on Instagram @hometreecharity.
Seán Ó Sullivan is the creator of the well known eco Irish notebook business, Badly Made Books, which has morphed into a new venture called Agus Arís. While a portion of this chat is about the need for sustainable printing practices, we delve a lot into the struggles of keeping a small business sustainable for the staff as well. Seán had so much great advice to share! You can stay up to date with his new venture on Instagram @and.agusaris.
Jeffrey Roe is the CEO of TOG which have been leading the way in cultivating skill sharing around making and repairing. They have been hosting repair cafés since 2014, so before many of us even knew of the term! Jeffrey also set up the brilliant Dublin Maker festival which we chat about as well. I've linked everything below but you can also stay up to date with TOG via Instagram @toghackerspace.