The billionaire retailer Philip Green is a hard-headed businessman who could never be accused of a "touchy-feely" attitude.
Yet like any good businessman, Green responds to consumer tastes and trends. So in a few days time, his flagship Topshop store in Oxford Street will start selling Fairtrade clothing brands such as People Tree.
Topshop is the latest retailer to jump on the ethical bandwagon. J Sainsbury this week announced the purchase of 40,000 tonnes of Fairtrade cotton, making the supermarket the UK's biggest buyer of such material.
Marks & Spencer, Asda and Oasis will also make Fairtrade products available at their stores when Fairtrade fortnight kicks off next week.
"Ethical shopping" is booming, reflecting the rise of the conscientious consumer. The Co-operative Bank's annual ethical consumerism report, published last December provided some hard numbers on this growth.
Sales of ethical clothing, which includes organic cotton and garments made from re-cycled material, were up 30% from £33m in 2003 to £43m last year.
The report said that in all, UK consumers spent a total of £25.8bn "in line with their values" in 2004, an increase of 15% on the previous year. If that figure seems surprisingly high, it has to be said that it includes money ploughed into ethical funds, which broke through the £10bn mark.
These figures are nothing to sniff at, but as the Co-op bank itself acknowledges, they make up just a small proportion of total spending. To put them into context, the average weekly value of sales in January was £4.4bn, according to the Office for National Statistics.
