How Agent Orange helped spawn the Socially Responsible Investing movement

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Sustainable, socially responsible mutual funds would not exist without agent orange.

The infamous chemical, along with other colorfully-named “agents” were sprayed over 12,000 square miles of Vietnam to act as an herbicide and defoliant. From 1961 to 1971, the chemical was used in vast quantities to kill plants, which included both the crops that fed the Viet Cong, and the thick jungle vegetation that made the conflict so perilous for American forces.

Agent orange proved to be so toxic that hundreds of thousands of people were sickened and killed by it.

The poisonous concoction was manufactured for the U.S. military by the Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical Company. Other companies participated in the production as well, including Thompson Chemicals Corp, Hercules Inc., Thompson Hayward Chemical Company, Diamond Alkali/Shamrock Company, United States Rubber Company, Agrisect Company, and Hoffman-Taft Inc.

Source: Green Chip Stocks (link opens in a new window)

Agriculture, Entrepreneurship
agribusiness, impact investing, investment fund