Disclaimer:
This is my own personal findings which will have its limitations. I am not a financial adviser and the information in this post is not considered financial advice. I encourage you to do your own research before deciding to commit your own funds to any investments in any of the stocks mentioned or on any other platforms for that matter. Returns are not guaranteed and the stocks may not meet your own personal standards.
There have been times where I thought that an investment was ethical or eco friendly, or at the very least not in a damaging industry. Then I later discover that it isn’t due to the lack of information easily accessible or unprecedented unethical practices of the stock. Therefore I cannot guarantee that all of these investments will be considered to be completely ethical or completely eco-friendly. I have aimed to omit the ones that are involved in aerospace, tobacco, war/military, fossil fuels and other unethical industries.
I am human so there may be some mistakes and I would greatly appreciate it if you could alert me to any potential issues with my list of investments in the comments. This is a community trying to help each other where there is limited information available. We can all contribute by providing kind education to each other on the ethical-ness of various investments. The investment world is not static, so over time there is a risk that this post may become out-dated as I won’t realistically be able to update this post each time I make amendments to my portfolio.
Investing with a conscience
If you’re interested in investing for the first time, or making your current investments more ethical and eco friendly you are in the right place.
For a number of years now I have been picking and choosing stocks in my Trading212 account. I have finally got to the point where I’d like to share my ethical and eco-investments with other people that want to invest with a conscience. I feel that the internet is lacking in this kind of education. It predominantly focusses on stocks performing well, regardless of the unethical business practices or environmentally damaging impact on our world. Personally, I find this irresponsible and not in alignment with my personal values, or indeed where I want my money to be going.
I am someone who believes that where we put our money makes a difference in this world. If I can put more of my money towards something that is doing good, it means there will be more good in the world. If more people can do the same thing, the world will become a much better place. There is power in where you decide to put your money. I’m using that power every day to invest in ethical and eco-friendly stocks/investments. I’m sharing this knowledge with you, so you can use your own power to create positive change in the world, if you choose to do so. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read my post. I hope it helps.
Cherry Picking Stocks
Originally I started off investing in many ETFs (collection of often hundreds of stocks with a particular theme), which is the general advice given to beginner investors to quickly diversity investments. However after extensive research into the ‘holdings’ (stocks/company names) in these ETFs, I was very disappointed to find that many stocks included in most, if not all ETFs I researched, had many non-ethical and non-eco-friendly stocks included in them; even if described as if they were supposed to be ethical or environmentally friendly in some way.
In addition, I also found that they were many stocks included in the ETFs that were performing very badly. I did not want them included within my overall stock portfolio. This was when I decided to cherry pick the stocks that were ethical and performing well that I was content with having within my own portfolio on Trading212.
Over time I have removed some stocks that were performing badly or that I discovered were non-ethical or not eco-friendly. I would like to share with you what I found. I also invite you to critique my portfolio in case there are any investments that I have unwittingly included, which are not or no longer ethical or eco-friendly.
The Cut
In order to make ‘the cut’ to my list, I actioned the following for each stock:
- Checked the Trading212 description of the stock to see if there are any mentions of aerospace, tobacco, military, fossil fuel, gas, oil or other unethical buzzwords and omitted these.
- Checked the name of the stock in the ‘No Thanks’ app to see if there’s any association with damaging behaviours regarding the Palestine genocide and omitted these as I don’t want my money to go towards this.
- For most I’ve also done a general internet search (on Ecosia not Google, to plant trees with every search rather than support Palestine genocide and other damaging actions) with the words ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ to check if there have been any adverse mention of the stocks being associated with greenwashing or bad practice in anyway. As you can imagine this is not an exact science so I’ve tried to gather as much information as I could within the small free time I have to evaluate the search results, which I am aware could also be biased.
- As I only want stocks that perform well, I checked the stock price graph of the last few years on Trading212 to see if they were going in an upwards direction and omit any that have got a very fluctuating or declining performance. I am aware that stocks will have varying performance but any that have quite drastic dips I omit, as although I want to invest in eco and ethical stocks, I also want to make profit – that’s the idea of investing – to make money, not to support ‘charity cases’. I would prefer to donate separately from investing for things like that, and then there is no disappointment if they perform badly. PS anyone who told you that ethical or eco investing is a wasted venture or doesn’t make money is wrong. It’s about being selective in which investments you choose to invest in and being vigilant and removing those that are performing poorly so they do not tank your entire portfolio. Not investing proportionally too much into one stock over another also helps prevent you being too exposed to the risk of a particular stock performing poorly and bringing your whole portfolio performance down with it. My overall performance of my portfolio on Trading212 is just over 10% (checked in May 2026 – 6 years investing since 2020).
- Currently (May 2026) Trading212 only allows a portfolio pie to consist of 50 stocks max, so I picked what I thought was the 50 best stocks at the time.
Helpful Investment Tips
Before I start my list of ethical and eco-investments, it felt responsible to quickly share a few helpful tips for beginner and seasoned investors alike; which would serve most people well to bare in mind:
- Only invest what you can afford to lose. If you invest more than you can afford, you may end up investing more than you intended, in order to chase losses – don’t do this. I typically invest a set amount each month. This has ranged between 5-15% of my monthly income, and has trended upwards over the years as disposable income increased. Setting an amount or % of your income to invest means that investing is more calculated, less emotional and will have less risk as you can then only lose a set amount each month, rather than an uncapped amount, that could mirror the behaviours of gambling.
- Don’t be emotional about the investments and be aware that all stocks go up and down. Small fluctuation such as -10% or +10% are common and not necessarily a cause for concern. Personally I start to look closely at investments that reduce by more than 15% and consider whether I want to remove them from my portfolio at that point. The only caveat to this would be in an unusual situation like Covid-19 where the whole world shut down. When world events like this happen, stocks do tend to dip quite drastically and then recover more than they went down by. In these cases it’s historically been better to hold onto your investments until the world situation improves, as you only lose money when you sell an investment.
- Automate your investments. Invest a set amount each month without fail – also called ‘dollar cost averaging’. It’s the idea that by investing consistently every month, any huge increases or decreases in the buy price of stocks will average out over time; compared to making sporadic high value investments of the same overall amount which may mean buying at the ‘wrong’ time when stock prices are high.
- Timing your investments. I personally invest in the middle of the month every month on a schedule. I time my investments in this way because there’s a small chance that I will be able to buy them at a discount. This is because there are less investors during the middle of the month compared to the end or start of the month when most people have received their monthly salary. This huge demand towards the end and beginning of the month means that if you buy investments at this time, there is a risk that you will buy the same stocks you could buy in the middle of the month at a higher price, purely because of the heightened demand. There have been many articles written about this too, suggesting it makes sense to invest in the middle of the month. I have set up an automation to deposit my funds into my Trading212 account at the beginning of the month when I get paid and then only buy my stocks in the middle of the month; when they should be at a slightly lower cost than the end or start of the month. Setting it up in this way helps me to slightly time the market to buy at a slight discount, as well as to help me not forget to do this (which is easily done).
- Invest like a woman. Despite more men engaging in investing than women (currently – I am sure this will change over time), research has found that women are actually 1.8% better at investing than men. Women typically pick stocks that perform better over the long term, rather than men who typically take on more risk by picking more speculative stocks that have a higher chance of performing poorly. Think more about the long term potential of stocks, reduce your risk appetite and check on stocks less regularly (ie every other month rather than weekly).
- Hodl (Hold) onto your investments for the long term. Hodl was an online accidental typo of ‘hold’, relating to advice to hold onto your investments for the long term. Through memes online, Hodl was kept alive by the younger generation, and I also affectionately say I am ‘Hodling’ my investments when speaking to other investment friends. When people say to hold onto your investments for the long-term, they are not talking about a short time like say a year or two, it’s more like 5 to 10 years or longer. In essence if you’re looking at an investment and do not plan to hold onto it for the next five years minimum, then it shouldn’t make the cut for you.
- Don’t put all your eggs in 1 basket. Diversify your investments by investing in a variety of different stocks from different industries to minimise your risk exposure. For a new investor, you can try investing in ETFs or exchange traded funds, which are a collection of stocks that fit within a particular description ie renewables. This can help to minimise your exposure, however as I found through my extensive research, unfortunately there are a lot of non-ethical and non-eco-friendly stocks included in most if not all exchanged funds that I have researched; as well as many very poorly performing stocks, you may rather not have within your portfolio.
- Past performance does not indicate future performance. Just because a stock has showed that it has been consistently moving in a positive direction, this doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way. However, having said that, it is a good indication of a healthier stock and it’s a good idea to look at stocks that have been doing well overall, as it could suggest that they may continue to perform well. It’s just worth noting that performance can change and does. Personally, I do not invest in stocks that have a very fluctuating performance, as quite frankly I don’t like stocks that don’t perform well, as I am investing to make, not lose money.
There will of course be lots more tips, but these were just ones that came to mind and have served me well over the years to help with not being emotional, being disciplined and balanced in my investment journey. If you have any other tips, please do be sure to share them in the comments.
*The Ethical & Eco Conscious Stock List*
*As stated above in the disclaimer, the ethical and eco status of these is always open to interpretation and possible amendment if new information comes to light. I may not be able to update this list frequently enough, so please always do your own research before deciding to invest.
This list is the result of several iterations over the years and will no doubt be subject to further iterations. I update my portfolio pie about every 2 months, to increase my exposure to higher performing stocks and reduce my exposure to lower performing stocks.
To try and be helpful I have also listed the stocks in order from roughly highest performing to lowest performing, as well as the rough calculation of what percentage of my overall portfolio pie I would invest in these. At the bottom of this post you will have the opportunity to copy my investments on Trading212, if this is something you’d like to do.
Below you will find I have listed the name of the stock followed by the current (dated May 2026) return on investment or performance (rounded to the nearest whole number) since I have invested in it (which could be anything from just a few months to several years).
Higher Performing:
I typically invest between 6.5% and 9% on the below stocks. I try not to invest more than 10% into any 1 stock and not have more than 50% of my portfolio invested into just a handful of stocks to reduce my overall risk. If any of them perform poorly, I will reduce the amount I invest in them proportionally within my stock portfolio, and promote a higher performing stock in my portfolio.
- KLA – 39%
- nVent Electric – 37%
- Analog Devices – 29%
- Steel Dynamics – 19%
- Broadcom – 16%
- Cboe Global Markets – 14%
- Applied Materials – 10%
Middle performing:
I typically invest between 1% to 6% on the below stocks. If any of them perform poorly, I will reduce the amount I invest in them proportionally within my stock portfolio, and vice versa.
- Hydro One – 4%
- WW Grainger – 3%
- Nordex – 3%
- Schneider Electric – 3%
- Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust – 3%
- Grenergy Renovables – 3%
- Welltower – 3%
- Clean Harbour – 3%
- Deere & Co – 1%
- Johnson Controls International – 1%
Lower performing:
I typically only invest just 0.5% into each of the below stocks due to their lower performance in comparison with the above stocks. If one of the below stocks becomes a higher performing stock I then increase the percentage allocation of my investment to that particular stock within my portfolio pie. If they perform worse than 15-20% I will remove them from my portfolio.
- AbbVie – – 12%
- Air Liquide – -2%
- American Express – -12%
- Arch Capital –-2%
- Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria – 1%
- Bloom Energy – 1%
- Cummins – 1%
- Elli Lilly & Co – -6%
- Emerson Electric – -4%
- Endesa – -3%
- GEA Group – -6%
- Hitachi – -3%
- Iberdrola – -3%
- Intercontinental Exchange – -10%
- Intuitive Surgical – -10%
- iShares Physical Gold – -7%
- Kadant – -1%
- KPN – -4%
- Lamb Research – 1%
- Lennox International – -6%
- Linde – -2%
- Mastercard – -13%
- Nextpower – 1%
- Quest Diagnostics – -8%
- Republic Services – 1%
- Solaria Energia y Medio Ambiente – -2%
- UCB – -12%
- Visa – -7%
- Waste Management – -1%
- Watts Water Technologies – -2%
- Zürich Insurance – -6%
COPY MY PORTFOLIO PIE ON TRADING 212
As mentioned above, I may not be in a position to update on this post of all changes to my portfolio pie on Trading212. As the below link seems to update when I make a change to my actual portfolio it may be the best place to see a live update of what I am investing in. It has taken me hours upon hours for me to get to where I am with my portfolio pie; so I do hope you find it useful.
Copying my pie will be a quick way for you to copy my investments in one go (if you’d like to, of course), instead of adding them manually to help save time. Once copied, you can make your own amendments to remove ones you don’t want and add ones you do want. Once you have copied my pie, if I make amendments to my pie, it will not amend your copied pie.
Here is the link to copy my investment portfolio pie on Trading212. You can start investing on Trading212 from as little as £1, and to invest in a pie, you will need roughly £50 as each pie has up to 50 stocks, needing a minimum of £1 investment each.
Let me know the comments if you like my Trading212 ‘No War Oil Planes Tobacco’ portfolio pie and which stocks you would like to add or remove, as I’m always open to suggestions.
Thank you for taking the time to read my post.
I hope you have a lovely day.
Robyn
