When it comes to investing, a growing share of Americans think strong financial returns are not enough. They want to make a social impact, too.

According to the US SIF Foundation, sustainable, responsible and impact investing grew by more than a third from 2014 to 2016. The sector accounted for $8.72 trillion in investments in 2016 – roughly one out of every five dollars under professional management in the U.S.

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Despite its growing popularity, especially among millennials, impact investing is still plagued by certain myths and not well understood by all consumers. As Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing has found, more than half of investors believe sustainable investments require a financial trade-off, despite a large body of research that suggests this is not the case.

“Impact investing is a great way to contribute to meeting your long-term financial goals and support your personal values at the same time,” says Geoffrey Brown, CEO of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA). “With a wide range of investment options and ever-changing definitions of industry terms, this space can be confusing for consumers.” These tips from NAPFA advisors offer guidance for anyone interested in becoming a socially responsible investor.

Tip #1: Understand your options


Socially responsible investing (SRI) can be as simple as opening a bank account with a community development financial institution (CDFI), which lends money in communities that do not have access to traditional forms of financing. But there are also exchange-traded funds (ETFs), mutual funds, loan funds and private investments that meet SRI criteria. 

Tip #2: Determine which issues matter to you


Are you more interested in protecting the environment or promoting workplace diversity? Do you want to make a difference in your community or at the national level? Figure out what’s most important to you and work with a financial advisor to find socially responsible investments that align with your values.

Tip #3: Decide how you want to drive change


Not all socially responsible investments have the same impact. One mutual fund may screen only for environmental factors, but do so across entire industries. Another mutual fund may file shareholder resolutions to bring about change on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues, but only at a few companies at a time. Make sure your impact investments deliver the type of change you’re hoping to see.

Tip #4: Measure performance 


As with any investment, you should measure the performance of your portfolio when you engage in impact investing. With mutual funds and ETFs, you might compare the return you are getting with the return on an index that tracks a representative sample of socially responsible companies, such as the MSCI ESG Indexes or Calvert US Large Cap Growth Responsible Index.

Tip #5: Develop an approach that works for you


Your first responsibility is your own financial well-being. Impact investing provides strong returns, but sometimes it’s best to sell a particular investment if it’s not meeting your expectations. Speak to a professional advisor to chart a course that helps you meet your long-term financial and social objectives.

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How can businesses better protect themselves from the increasing volume and complexity of cyberattacks while preparing for the opportunities of automation and digitalization of industries? A new report by global company TÜV Rheinland, a company that tackles  challenges arising from the interaction between man, technology and the environment, aims to sheds some light on these questions. 

According to Frank Luzsicza, the Executive Vice President of ICT & Business Solutions at TÜV Rheinland, this years report highlights the implications of our increasingly connected world, how global regulation is responding and the need to inject trust into cybersecurity. It also highlights the importance of protecting ourselves from ‘intelligent’ cyberattacks, and what we should do to close the skills gap in an environment starved for cybersecurity talent, yet overwhelmed by volumes of data. 

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Leading cybersecurity experts from Europe, North America and Asia identified the top eight cybersecurity trends for this year:

TREND 1: A rising global tide of cyber-regulation increasing the price of privacy

Data protection is a critical concern in an increasingly digital world and May 25, 2018 is a turning point for data protection in Europe. It marks the end of the transitional period for the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as it becomes enforceable by law. It disrupts data governance and how information is protected for any organization controlling or processing EU citizen personal data, and leads a growing list of emerging data protection regulations from around the globe. Failure to comply could result in fines of up to 4% of global turnover – a significant sum that demands attention. Expect to see the EU Commission hold major global companies accountable for GDPR violations.

TREND 2: The Internet of Things drives the convergence of safety, cybersecurity, and data privacy

In 2016, Mirai proved that Internet of Things (IoT) devices can be effectively weaponized as botnets. Today, product development, time to market considerations, and technical power constraints leave IoT devices exposed by exploitation of critical vulnerabilities. The impact of data breaches now extends far beyond simple data monetization to ‘kinetic’ threats to health and safety, as devices and systems are directly connected to open networks. It’s widely accepted that the state of IoT security is poor and, with over 500 connected devices expected to cohabit with us in our homes by 2022, these represent a major risk to safety, cybersecurity, and data privacy.

TREND 3: Operational Technology emerges as a frontline for cyberattacks

The industrial internet is already transforming global industry and infrastructure, promising greater efficiency, productivity and safety. To compete means to move process equipment online, often unwittingly exposing component vulnerabilities to cyberattacks. Manufacturing plants are targeted to obtain intellectual property, trade secrets, and engineering information. Attacks on public infrastructure are motivated by financial gain, hacktivism, and national state agendas. Fear of a ‘worst-case scenario’, where attackers trigger a breakdown in systems that underpin society, was highlighted this year at the World Economic Forum. Industrial systems are particularly susceptible to supply-chain attacks, adversaries have recognized this, and are targeting them.

TREND 4: With cyber defences in place, focus shifts to threat detection & response

Recent cyberattacks on high-profile organizations are proving that, against the sophisticated and persistent cybercriminals, preventative controls alone are not enough. Today, it takes organizations, on average, over 191 days to detect a data breach. The longer it takes to detect and respond to threats the greater the financial and reputational damage done to the organization by the incident. Due to the vast growth of security log data, limitations of incumbent technologies, ineffective use of threat intelligence, inability to monitor IoT devices, and shortage of cybersecurity talent, organizations are exposed to costly dwell times.

TREND 5: Increasing use of Artificial Intelligence for cyberattacks and cyber defence

As organizations undergo a digital transformation, there is a growing volume of increasingly sophisticated and persistent cyberattacks. Malware is becoming smarter, able to ‘intelligently’ adapt to and evade traditional detection and eradication measures. With a global shortage of cybersecurity talent, organizations are losing the cyber arms race as a result. The volume of security data now far exceeds our legacy capability to use it effectively, leading to a growing number of AI-enabled cybersecurity use cases: accelerating incident detection and response; better identifying and communicating risks to the business; providing a unified view of security status across the organization.

TREND 6: Certifications become necessary to inject trust into cybersecurity

It’s broadly accepted that cybersecurity and data protection are of critical importance in an increasingly digital world, but how can you judge the effectiveness of an organization’s cybersecurity posture? There is a growing concern for trust in cybersecurity, evidenced by existing and emerging standards. For CISOs and product manufacturers alike, certification validates you have done what you say you have done. Today, however, product security assurance certification schemes tend to focus on the critical infrastructure and government sectors only. Where does that leave the manufacturers of consumer products?

TREND 7: Passwords being replaced by biometric authentication

Our digital lives are ruled by a complex web of online apps each requiring a username and password to control access. To protect the data behind these apps, selecting an obscure and complex password, and changing it often, is good practice, but also quite rare. With exponential improvements in computing power, and easy access to lots of it in the cloud, the time it takes to brute force passwords is rapidly reducing. What took nearly 4 years in 2000, now takes only 2 months. Add to that the fact that stolen, hacked, and traded, passwords have never before been so openly available. As a result, it’s increasingly commonplace to encounter biometric authentication (facial, fingerprint, iris, and voice) included in everyday mobile, tablet, and laptop devices, as well as physical access and online services.

TREND 8: Industries under siege: Healthcare, Finance, and Energy

The majority of cyberattacks are undertaken by criminal organizations and are motivated by money. The value of information on the dark web depends on demand for the data, the available supply, its completeness, and ability for reuse. As a result, healthcare and financial personal information are highly sought after. Medical records can fetch $1-$1,000, depending on how complete they are, while credit cards can fetch around $5-$30 dollars, if bundled with the information necessary to do immediate damage. Other cyberattacks have more political and nation-state motives, here disruption to critical services through attacks on the energy sector is a key risk in 2018; as evidenced by recent news of Russia’s campaign of cyberattacks targeting the US power grid, which is suspected to have been underway for several years.

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According to a new report by Barclays, new technology is changing our work and social lives at unprecedented speed and intensity.

Leaps in technological advancement are nothing new, and innovation often results in incredible step changes in the home and the workplace: the printing presses of the 1400s widened access to books (and therefore knowledge) for the first time; the Industrial Revolution’s mechanisation led to an explosion in both industrial output and urbanisation; cars, aeroplanes and the internet have connected people around the world like never before.

Machines are ascendant – but don’t discount humans

Current advances in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are being made possible through the confluence of three powerful tech-driven events: the rapid digitisation of the economy, which is creating trillions of gigabytes of data every year (and rising); the plummeting cost of storing all that data; and an explosion in ever cheaper, ever more powerful computing power.

Historical technological breakthroughs often succeeded in eliminating back-breaking and repetitive tasks, allowing us to spend our time and energy on more ‘worthwhile’ activities. Now advances in Artificial Intelligence mean machines are increasingly imitating humans in how they think and act, and are increasingly involved in work that has been exclusively done by people.

However, we don’t believe that robots will completely replace humans in the workplace any time soon. Crucially, people retain the upper hand over machines in two important ways:

Preparing for change

Innovation continues to improve human lives, but technological advances do not always have an unambiguously positive impact.

We’ve learned from history that the application of new technology often leads initially – counter intuitively – to lower productivity, depressed wages and disrupted industries. We argue in Delayed expectations: automation, productivity and wages that the true effects of new, groundbreaking technologies often take decades to improve productivity.

It takes time for economies of scale to kick in on the production side, for consumer behaviour to adapt, for companies using the technology to refine or even change their business models. While business and society catch up, productivity tends to lag, despite relatively low unemployment figures.

Governments, institutions and society at large should all be preparing for the potential economic fall-out by seeking solutions to mitigate the effects of disruption and job and wage polarisation. The concept of a universal minimum income, for example, is currently hotly debated, while taxation on robots has also been proposed by such luminaries as Bill Gates.

The debate around possible solutions will likely continue for years to come. Historically, society has always found a way to adapt to both the beneficial and the challenging effects of technological change. We believe that people will successfully navigate the current period of technological change as they have in previous periods of technological advancement throughout history.

Ajay Rajadhyaksha is a Managing Director and Head of Macro Research at Barclays, based in New York. Aroop Chatterjee is a Director and Head of FX and EM Macro Strategy, Americas.

Scotland’s heritage attractions have hit a record milestone, welcoming more than 5 million people for the first ever time in a single year and boosting economic growth.

Historic Environment Scotland (HES), who manage over 300 Historic Scotland visitor attractions across the country representing more than 5,000 years of Scottish history, are celebrating a 17% increase in footfall from the previous financial year, recording 5,041,297 visitors throughout the 2017/18 financial year.

HES is the lead public body charged with caring for, protecting and promoting the historic environment and will deliver Scotland’s first strategy for the historic environment, called “Our Place in Time” – which sets out a vision for how Scottish heritage can be understood, valued, cared for and enjoyed.

It’s a clear sign that countries with a rich heritage or home to historical sites can profit from them if managed correctly. While many entrepreneurs and governments are focused on the “next big thing,” assets that are hundreds of years old may still harbor untapped wealth.

The surge in numbers across Scotland is being attributed to growth in UK, European and overseas visitors, with a significant uplift in Scots visiting sites partly due to a strong membership base of HES that numbers more than 194,000.

The ongoing ‘Outlander effect’ has seen North American visitor figures increasing by 27%, and French visitors increasing by 19% year on year. The sites that have featured in the popular American-British television series Outlander continue to enjoy an uplift in visitor numbers with Doune Castle attracting a massive 227% increase in numbers and Blackness Castle increasing by 182% since 2013.

“Over five million visitors have flocked to our wealth of historic sites across the length and breadth of the country, ranging from iconic attractions such as Edinburgh Castle and Stirling Castle, to landmarks such as Skara Brae in Orkney and Iona Abbey, as well as castles in Scotland’s historic towns such as St Andrews Castle,” said Stephen Duncan, Director of Commercial and Tourism at HES.

“This rise in visitor numbers at our staffed sites has also been complemented by visitor growth at our unstaffed free access properties, bringing the overall total to an estimated 12 million.”

The announcement follows the recent publication of HES’s Investment Plan, which sets out an investment programme to enhance the condition of sites and improve visitor experience, scheduled to run until 2021/22. Significant investment in 2017/18 has seen the upgrade of visitor facilities such as heating, toilets and lighting systems at a number of properties across the HES estate.

His Holiness Pope Francis welcomed Formula E drivers to the Eternal City for the first-ever E-Prix in Rome on April 14.

Pope Francis welcomed the drivers competing in the ABB FIA Formula E Championship to his residence in Santa Marta ahead of the first-ever E-Prix on the streets of Rome. Alongside Founder & CEO of Formula E Alejandro Agag – as well as Automobile Club d’Italia (ACI) President Angelo Sticchi Damiani – the drivers, team representatives and the official championship car were given a private Apostolic Blessing before attending the papal audience.

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Actress Sienna Miller also brought some additional stardust to this historic day in Rome. The Hollywood star added her name to the roster of A-listers attending Formula E races this season after Leonardo DiCaprio and Orlando Bloom celebrated Bloom’s 40th at the Marrakesh E-Prix and Kylie Minogue joined the party in Santiago.

Miller was taken for a spin around the race track at top speed in the BMW i8 Qualcomm safety car by Formula E founder and CEO Alejandro Agag.

Miller wasn’t the only celeb in attendance, there was royalty too – the Duchess of York and Prince Albert of Monaco also attended alongside actress Michelle Yeoh and Tess Daly.

The 36-year-old soaked in the festival atmosphere in the motorsport mad capital of Italy as she chatted with teams, drivers and fans at the track and insisted the unique racing on the city streets had left her a Formula E convert.

“This is the first time that I’ve ever been at a Formula E event and it has been really exciting. It’s great to see cars racing in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and fantastic that something so fun can also be helping to make a difference to the world we live in, said Miller.

Celebrities were given a tour of the Venturi Formula E garage alongside Prince Albert where they met with Venturi drivers Edoardo Mortara and Maro Engel to learn about the cars and the importance of the technology. 

Formula E is more than just a race to be the best – it’s a competitive platform to test and develop road relevant technologies, helping refine the design and functionality of electric vehicle components and speeding-up the transition to clean transportation on a global scale.

For this season, more manufacturers have joined the electric revolution with reigning champion Lucas di Grassi looking to defend his title for the Audi Sport ABT Schaeffler team. More big-name manufacturers have also committed to race in Formula E – including BMW and Nissan in tandem with a new-look car and batter. Mercedes-Benz and Porsche plan to join next year.

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Hot on the heels of Tesla, Volvo Trucks has introduced its first all-electric truck for commercial use – the Volvo FL Electric. Mainly targeted at urban areas, it’s ideally suited to cargo transport at night and early mornings, due to its low noise output.

“We’re immensely proud to present the first in a range of fully electrically-powered Volvo trucks ready for regular traffic. With this model we are making it possible for cities that aim for sustainable urban development to benefit from the advantages of electrified truck transports,” says Claes Nilsson, President Volvo Trucks.

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With better air quality and less noise in the city, it is possible to plan for housing and infrastructure more freely than at present. An electric truck without any exhaust emissions can be used in indoor terminals and environmental zones. Their low noise level creates opportunities for doing more work at night, thus reducing the burden on the roads during the day.

There is considerable market interest in electric trucks. Many potential customers have questions about the opportunities generated by the new technology and how it can impact their operations.

In order to make the transition secure and smooth, Volvo will offer holistic solutions based on each customer’s individual needs regarding driving cycles, load capacity, uptime, range and other parameters. Such a solution may encompass everything from route analysis and battery optimisation to servicing and financing. Volvo Trucks is also working closely with several suppliers of charging equipment to offer customers high uptime and ensure ongoing productivity.

Backing the Volvo Trucks offer is the Volvo Group’s accumulated expertise in electrified transport solutions. Sister company Volvo Buses has sold more than 4,000 electrified buses since 2010. The technology used for propulsion and energy storage in the Volvo FL Electric has been thoroughly tried and tested from the outset and is supported by Volvo Trucks’ far-reaching network for sales, service and parts supply.  

“From experience we know how important it is that cities, energy suppliers and vehicle manufacturers cooperate in order for large-scale electrification to become a reality. With attractive incentives, agreed standards and a long-term strategy for urban planning and expansion of the charging infrastructure, the process can go much faster,” explains Jonas Odermalm.

Volvo Trucks believes that it is essential to take a holistic view of electrification of the transport sector to handle the ongoing challenges in areas such as electricity generation and batteries.

“For instance, in order to ensure that raw materials for the batteries are extracted in a responsible way, the Volvo Group works with the Drive Sustainability network, which has a special function that monitors this issue. The Volvo Group is also involved in various projects where batteries from heavy electric vehicles get a second lease of life, reused for energy storage. All the questions about handling of batteries have not yet been solved, but we are working actively both within the Group and together with other actors to drive development and create the necessary solutions,” says Jonas Odermalm.

Battery recharging time from empty to fully charged (on fast charge) is 1-2 hours and trucks can also be charged overnight for up to 10 hours. With a range of up to 300 km the first two Volvo FL Electric trucks will be operated by refuse collection and recycling company Renova and haulage firm TGM.

The Off Peak City Distribution project studied the effects of goods transport at night in central Stockholm. By avoiding peak hour traffic the trucks were able to do their jobs in one-third of the time compared to daytime operation.

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It costs about £56 million a year to clean up chewing gum in England. One woman has come up with a novel solution…

What does the world spend about $25 billion on each year, only to throw it away?

The answer is chewing gum. It is a blight on city streets, expensive for local authorities to deal with, and takes a heavy toll on the environment, according to its critics.

But one woman in Britain is performing modern-day alchemy on it.

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“When I started to look into it in 2006, gum had only been declared a litter in 2005. I was gobsmacked. We spend so much money clearing it up,” Gumdrop founder Anna Bullus told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

How much money? About 56 million pounds ($79 million) a year in England alone, the government reckons, to rid the streets of this form of litter. Only cigarette butts are more prevalent.

After eight years of research, including working with materials scientists, Bullus found a way to compound discarded gum into pink pellets called gum-tec.

That processing is done by third parties. Gumdrop then sells the transformed material to firms that make all manner of items that more commonly use plastic or rubber, including ski-jacket toggles, flip-flops and reusable coffee cups. The volumes are significant: last year the company, which has just three employees, recycled 25 tonnes of gum.

STICKY SITUATION

Bullus’s innovation goes some way to helping local councils save money.

“Councils have to use specialist equipment to remove (gum), which is both time-consuming and very expensive,” said Martin Tett, the environment spokesman for the Local Government Association (LGA).

And money is tight: austerity measures mean local councils are getting less cash from central government; the LGA reckons that between 2015 and 2020, councils will have lost three-quarters of their core central government funding.

“At a time when councils face considerable ongoing funding pressures, this is a growing cost pressure they could do without,” said Tett of the problem gumming up local streets.

For its source material, Gumdrop relies on the public to place chewed gum into its hot-pink bins that sit at 600 locations such as train stations, theme parks and universities – a fivefold increase in bin sites since it started in 2015.

It makes money by charging councils for that service.

It also works with some on innovative fixes – such as on Kensington High Street in west London, a tourist hotspot because of its proximity to Kensington Palace, former home to the late Princess Diana.

There the council handed out 5,000 strikingly pink keyring balls in which people could store used gum. When full, the chewer could mail the orb free of charge to Gumdrop; for every three sent in, Gumdrop would send them another.

Gumdrop also put up hard-to-miss football-sized hot-pink bins – which, naturally enough, were made from recycled gum.

The result was a 90 percent drop in gum litter in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, according to Suez, the company contracted by the council to clean gum off its streets.

“Unfortunately because of their budget, (the council) can’t afford to carry on using the bins,” said Bullus.

BUDGET BUSTER?

Suez uses steam-cleaning machines to prise gum from the pavement. That gum, which cannot be recycled as it is too dirty, is then sent to a landfill site or for incineration.

“We’re happy to take money off the council, but that’s not the point,” said Paul Siggery, a manager at Suez.

“The money they pay us comes from the people that pay their council tax. It’s costing them a fortune to clean this gum. That needs to be addressed.”

Siggery said since Gumdrop’s campaign ended in May 2016, the pavements had returned to the state they were in previously.

Steam-cleaning has other costs too: because the process weakens the grouting that hold paving slabs in place, Siggery said, the slabs can move apart. That makes them a trip hazard, so the council has to spend yet more money making them safe.

“Something in that oily-based gum is eating into the concrete,” Siggery said.

The LGA wants gum manufacturers to pay more towards clean-up costs.

The largest of those by far in Britain is the Wrigley Company. Its website says more than 28 million people in Britain “regularly chew gum” and, on average, each of them goes through 125 pieces a year.

Wrigley’s said it takes the issue of gum litter very seriously, and is the largest funder of anti-littering campaigns in Britain, supporting several programmes over the last decade.

Last year it gave 600,000 pounds – about 1 percent of what it costs councils to clear up gum litter – to the Chewing Gum Action Group, which works on the problem with local councils.

“We strongly believe that changing individual behaviour around litter is the only long-term solution to keep our streets clean,” a company spokeswoman said.

Britain’s Department for the Environment, which is also a member of the Chewing Gum Action Group, agrees that industry-led campaigns can change behaviour.

“But we are not ruling out the possibility of further regulation if that is what is required to achieve real change,” a spokesman said in a statement.

In the meantime, Gumdrop is pressing on with its mission, with Bullus considering her next chewing gum product.

The latest idea? With the summer festival season approaching, what could be more apt than something to tackle Britain’s notoriously unpredictable weather: wellington boots, also known as – you guessed it – gumboots.

By Lee Mannion @leemannion; Editing by Robert Carmichael. 

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