I don’t pick individual stocks, but I do invest a fair bit of my money ethically, through Australian Ethical Investment.
The thing is, there are lots of different types of ethical. There’s environmentally ethical, animal-testing ethical, treating their employees well ethical, there’s least worst by industry ethical, there’s producing something of value to society ethical, there’s corporate activism ethical (buying shares in a company to improve their behaviour). Some people believe there’s a correlation between these kinds of ethics and good corporate behaviour, which ultimately delivers better value of the long term.
You buying individual shares won’t make any real difference, but a managed fund that pools the money of many people like yourself can make a difference by supporting ethical companies or influencing the behaviour of not quite so good ones.
I’ve been happy with my Aust Ethical managed funds so far (and I do keep track of and compare performance), they’re the biggest in Australia, but I believe there’s others. I think there’s a Catholic one, but they may just do superannuation.
I don’t just do it for the warm inner glow. I actually feel it makes financial sense in the long term to be a little over-represented in alternative energy production, energy efficiency, and health technology. They invest in IT, telecommunications, property and financial services as well so it’s not like they’re crazy skewed.
There’s a list of the companies they invest in here:
https://www.australianethical.com.au/companies-we-invest-in/If you want to buy individual shares yourself, you could just pick from this list.