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WIDENING PARTICIPATION145who thought it would be okay to polluteif it made a big difference to corporateprofitability. If that pollution could be safelyout of sight – either underground or in afar-away country – so much the better.It is an alarming finding when putin black and white, but the options arerarely that stark. The bigger challenge forbusiness comes when the choice is betweenvarious shades of grey, or when there is noconscious decision at all, but the businessquietly drifts from its whiter-than-whitestarting place to another, to something everdarker without anyone really noticing.You might argue that this is the positionthe banks found themselves in withpayment-protection insurance. Somewherealong the line what started as a goodproduct for some customers was turnedinto an exploitative scam to make moneyout of all of them.But it is not just the banks. Any trip to asupermarket confirms how commonplaceIf a commitment tosustainability is seensimply as a marketingploy, it will backfireit is for businesses that want to make a bitmore money to seek to put up prices inways the customer might not notice – bychanging the size or shape of a chocolatebar, by putting a fraction less in a packet, byusing inferior ingredients or components.Less visibly, but equally dubiously, thesupermarket might exploit its suppliers –small businesses which have not got thestrength to stand up to it – and unilaterallycut the prices it agreed earlier to pay them.In all these cases there is a line where theacceptable becomes unacceptable – butwhere is it exactly? And on the basis thatwhat goes round comes around, how longcan the company hope to get away with it?The travails of Tesco, the UK supermarketchain, have deep roots.© GettyA farmer harvesting Fairtrade vanilla during themonsoon in IndiaGLOBAL DEVELOPMENT GOALS 2014