You knew it, of course. You’ve been buying organic veg from the farmers’ market and recycling your newspapers since at least 2003. It’s the others who have taken ages to catch on. Now that stories about industrial farming, toxins in the home and spooky climate change are all over the telly, asking awkward questions is what anyone with half a brain does, leaving the bling-a-ling credit-card zombie for dust.

It’s all causing quite a stir in entrepreneurial circles, let me tell you. Joe Public is, after all, overturning a fundamental tenet of post-war mass consumption — ye shall bargain-hunt — and electing to pay slightly over the odds for ecoluxe, which is a fancy way of saying decent quality, plus peace of mind. He is falling for a sexy array of ethical labels, from Innocent to Howies, Ecover to Gossypium, who rate principles as highly as profit. There is money in kind.

But what does it mean for us, the humble (although evidently, rather powerful) shopper? It means that shopping is no longer a simple transaction between desire and bank balance. It’s an exercise in moral point-scoring, where your opponent is your own conscience. The options are: good, naughty and just about acceptable. Good is a piece of hand-reared organic lamb bought from a local, small-scale farmer; naughty is a £4 pair of supermarket jeans sewn by an underage Vietnamese sweatshop skivvy; and just about acceptable is a tasty fair-trade mango, flown in by carbon-belching freight plane from Trinidad.

It’s really just a case of a little gentle brain rewiring. Which we can do, must, and — since we are all fundamentally decent sorts — will.

POSH GREEN GOURMANDS

Credo Save our countryside from the townies!

Pin-ups Zac Goldsmith, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Patrick Holden (handsome director of the Soil Assocation)

Inspiration The unassailable deliciousness of a just-picked organic Allington Pippin; childhood memories of the meadows as they once were

Look Barbour jacket, Hunter wellies, dog hair

Big issues Death of farming, food miles, rape of the seas

Set text Keats’s Ode to Autumn, Jane Grigson’s English Food

Green credentials Shops only at farmers’ markets; recycles assiduously; avoids endangered fish

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