Financial gains are not incompatible with sustainability, according to many. The following terms, often used interchangeably, illustrate various shades of the notion of conscious commerce.
The phrase triple bottom line — coined by consultant John Elkington in 1994, according to The Economist — says a business should measure and attempt to optimize its human capital and environmental impact in addition to the more traditional monetary measure of success. The alliteratively inclined distill this theory as valuing profit, people and planet.
Investopedia calls impact investing “a subset of socially responsible investing … that actively seeks to make a positive impact — investing, for example, in nonprofits that benefit the community or in clean technology enterprises.” Impact investing aims to “build prosperous economies of healthy and sustainable environments for humans and other living things,” according to Reinventure Capital.
Nonextractive economies refer to economies that support business growth without depleting natural resources.
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