You can do good with your money, without using your money. I know that sounds strange. But when you have your money in a bank account, your bank basically lends it to others. And depending on your bank, that money can go to help people pump out more petrol out of the ground, or fund startups and companies that work on doing good.

So changing bank (1), or credit card (2), or even pension fund can make your money work for things that you care more about.

Action question

Where is your personal or company money sitting? How can you check if the companies handling your money are doing it in a way that fits your values? Who within your company could you nudge to make a change about pensions or bank accounts?

Footnotes

(1) There is a website called bank.green that helps you see if your bank is climate responsible, meaning it doesn’t finance fossil fuels, finances low-carbon technologies, etc. Thanks to Nick Lewis and his website One small step for Earth for helping me find this nice resource

(2) For example, in a few countries around the world, the WWF has partnered with credit card companies so that each time you make a payment a part of the commission instead of going to the bank goes to the WWF.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.