Now There's Mortgages for the Green Brigade; Each of the Last Five Years Has Seen the Ecology Rated the UK's Fastest-Growing Society

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Ethical investment has gradually become accepted by all but the most cynical of City fund managers, thanks largely to the pioneering efforts of the Co-op Bank.

Now the growing "green" sector within the personal finance industry has a new product on offer - mortgages for those whose applications are deemed ecologically-friendly.

Housebuyers who agree to install energy-saving systems will be high on the list. Unsurprisingly, the building society specialising in these loans is called the Ecology.

The organisation was founded in 1981 in the small Yorkshire town of Cross Hills, near Keighley.

In that Thatcherite decade, the rural backwater was an appropriate …