Ethical investment

Savings and bank accounts
Triodos Bank (call 0845 458 9526 or visit www.triodos.co.uk) lends savers' money to good causes at affordable rates and supports charities, community business and campaign groups. It publishes a project list so that customers can see exactly where their money goes. Savers can opt to sign over a proportion of the interest they receive to a favoured charity, or to charities in general.

You can also buy shares in the bank's Ethical Property Company, which rents properties on reasonable terms to charities such as Oxfam.

The Co-op Bank - recently promoting its ethical standpoint on TV ads - says it operates socially responsible banking policies. It runs savings accounts for people who don't want their money lent to organisations that they find unacceptable. The bank's online offshoot, Smile, pays particularly good rates on savings.

Investment
The Ethical Investment Research Service (call 020 7840 5700 or visit www.eiris.org), better known as Eiris, provides bags of information about ethical funds, including performance tables. Both Eiris and the UK Social Investment Forum (call 020 7749 or visit www.uksif.org) publish lists of independent financial advisers who actively discuss socially responsible investment (SRI) tactics with clients.In 2001, Eiris teamed up with the people who run the FTSE stock market indices to create a package of FTSE4Good indices: UK, US, Europe and Global.

Ethical and Environmental Screening Services (call 01242 539850) will devise bespoke investment portfolios for individuals and investment managers that will take account of both negative and positive ethical investment options. The £500 annual membership fee includes half-yearly updates based on both anecdotal and published information.

Fidelity's Fundsnetwork site (www.fundsnetwork.co.uk) also carries information about ethical funds.