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Linda Row reports for on Triodos Bank's AGM Meeting

Triodos bank was founded 27 years ago in the Netherlands by a small group of forward-thinking individuals. They had the radical idea that money could be used in a positive way to help progressive ethical businesses around at that time. The bank has been at the forefront of radical thinking about ethical investment ever since.

At their Annual Meeting (a refreshingly non bank-like experience, where the speakers were lambasted by the audience for wearing suits), they presented themselves in a very open and transparent way. This shows the difference between Triodos and the other high street banks, all of which employ Corporate Social Responsbility (CSR) departments to do this job.

Speakers from the bank, Peter Blom, Charles Middleton and James Vaccaro, posed the question “ where should Triodos go from here?” now that the ‘mainstream’, after 27 years, is (on the face of it) catching up.

Triodos, having invented some of the terminology for ethical investment, realise that when the mainstream start to use your rhetoric, you need to change your vocabulary. The bank is currently assessing the likely need for change over the next 10-20 years, when the world moves into the unknown sphere of climate chaos.

After a vegan lunch, eaten with wooden forks to avoid the use of plastic, we all had the opportunity to talk to representatives from the bank. In the afternoon Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economic Foundation, gave a well-crafted talk about the future of trade. He pointed out that our current manufacturing base in the developing countries, is not only unsustainable due to air miles but that the individuals employed on our behalf have had no increase in quality of life since we went down this route. The ‘happiness factor’ of all of us in the West has not increased with the over abundance of goods at our disposal, and we need to consider the impact that all of this consumption will have on the future of the planet, before irreversible-feedback from climate change makes our efforts completely pointless.

The next speaker was Julia Hailes, writer and author of The Green Consumer Guide; she is a lady after my own heart believing that ethical consumerism will help change the world. Her view is that the ‘ trickle effect’, where every individual acts responsibly, can create a major force en mass. The idea that we should all use our spare cash in a positive way, helping to support initiatives around the world that are working towards a sustainable future, is not new, as Ghandi’s grandson who was in the audience pointed out.

Post ‘peak oil’; we all need to consider very carefully our methods of trading with the rest of the world and to reduce our levels of consumption. We will need to find a balance between lowering levels of trade and the impact that this will have on the producers. Quite a challenging task!

Triodos is certainly achieving what it set out to do and all the green businesses it supports are testimony to this.
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