Appointing a Director for Corporate Responsibility is good for stock value.

And brand value lies as much in ethical sourcing and sustainable production as it does in the quality of the end product these days.

Ten years ago, saving trees was done by people called Swampy and as far as we were concerned, coffee came from jars, not from impoverished growers in Peru. Now, be-suited execs talk about environmental and social bottom lines and fair-trade and organic sales are soaring.

Corporate pariahs such as Shell, BP, McDonalds, Starbucks, Nike and Tesco have all been bending over backwards to convince people they sell healthy food, are doing their best to protect the environment and are not destroying town centres or suppressing wages in southeast Asia. And even companies whose reputation hasn’t been battered by environmental or sweatshop scandals have been embracing the climate change cause and social responsibility issues.

Is their effort to reflect the new zeitgeist superficial? Or are they genuinely trying to marry ethics with profit, sustainability with growth?

It is possible to make money and do good in the process, says Trendbuero in Hamburg, Germany. Predatory capitalism is on the wane, it says. Co-operation, not competition, is the watchword.