As I have been attending Whartons “Essentials of Finance” course, I noticed that a lot of emphasis was being placed on impact investing. However, what is impact investing, and does impact investing mean one will have to sacrifice financial return? According to “thegiin” impact investing is defined as “Investments made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return”. Clearly the definition of impact investing is very broad, meaning that millions of companies from various fields can be put under this one umbrella.
One specific company that I would like to spotlight for the sake of this blog is “eatcriche.com”. I chose this specific website to portray how impact investing does not always have to be something basic like planting trees, or feeding the homeless, but rather more bizarre topics. “Eatcriche” is a company founded on the purpose of farming sustainably and providing the malnourished with more food sustainably. This is why their team chose to pursue the idea of raising crickets, and utilizing these crickets to slowly cure malnourishment in Cambodia. Why Crickets? one may ask, simply because of their nutritional value and the little amount of resources needed to raise them. In a 100g serving of steak versus crickets, crickets outnumber the steak in amount of essential amino acids by far(all 9). It is also significant to point out that a large reason for the consumption of ground beef is because of its protein value, and in a 100g cricket steak there actually happens to be six times the amount of protein in 100g of round beef. While these facts may seem eye opening, the idea of consuming crickets may slowly seem doable for some due to its positive impact on the environment as well. While the production of a 100g beef steak produces 750g greenhouse gas emissions, the same amount of cricket steak could be produced with 100 times less greenhouse gas emissions. Now as most know, it is greenhouse gas emissions that have been labeled the cause of global warming and also certain respiratory diseases.
Now, to revisit the question from earlier, if impact investing requires one to sacrifice financial gain, there is no definite answer. The fact is that impact investing is a relatively new topic, and there is not enough data to back up these claims. However, with society quickly changing due to the emphasis placed on making the world a more sustainable place by Gen Z, it would not come as a surprise if impact investing happens to be the next big thing.
With more publicity, companies like eatcirche could literally save the world one step at a time by offering more sustainable alternatives for everyday products that are slowly tearing our world apart.
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