A number of college students were awarded prizes for their innovative green ideas at the ceremony for the 2012 Klaus Toepfer Environmental Innovation Competition on Monday.

Initiated by German Consulate General of Shanghai and UNEP-Tongji Institute of Environmental Studies for Sustainable Development (IESD), the competition aims to foster environmental creative thinking, raise awareness of environmental friendliness, and encourage Chinese students to come up with innovative ideas for environmental protection.

But there was a nagging doubt during the ensuing Sino-European Academic Symposium on Green Economy and Ecosystems Management: While environmentally friendly concepts and green technology are generally felt to be good, can they also be profitable?

"Companies must not only serve the interests of their shareholders, but should serve the environment and society as well. Anyway, entrepreneurs also have children," said Stefan Moebs, Germany's acting Consul General for Shanghai, in addressing the symposium.

"Entrepreneurs also have children" is probably the strongest appeal that can be made to entrepreneurs in persuading them to care for the environment, in an age of heady growth.

Apparently, this appeal - to think of future generations - is not powerful enough to usher in real change, as long as government continues to view business as their own business.

Market forces alone cannot lead to a green or greener economy, warned Hans-Joachim Ziesing, senior policy adviser at the Ecologic Institute in Berlin.

For green concepts to be commercially viable, there must be policy adjustments to create proper incentives and regulation on the part of the government, Ziesing told the symposium.

Unfortunately, today green or environmentally friendly concepts are almost exclusively contrived out of corporate self-interest, as a new marketing ploy to help consumers develop loyalty to an corporation.

As Philip Kotler, David Hessekiel and Nancy R. Lee observe in their book "Good Works! Marketing and Corporate Initiatives that Build a Better World ... and the Bottom Line," corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs can help corporations to build and improve their image.

According to the authors, CSR refers to "a commitment to improve community well-being through discretionary business practices and contributions of corporate resources."

Since its conception in the 1960s, CSR has been evolving.

Before the 1990s, the concept of CSR was about "doing good to look good."

Since then corporate leaders began to look for causes they believed in, narrowed their giving to a select few corporations, with some adopting the motto "doing all we can to do the most good, not just some good."

"A commitment to doing the right thing is no guarantee of winning in the marketplace, but over the past 30 years, numerous companies have demonstrated that you can simultaneously build a better world and the bottom line," the book claims.

Growing sectors

I do not know to what extent the claim can be substantiated by the core business of the great companies today.

Here is the latest top 10 of the Fortune Top 500 companies in the US: Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart Stores, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, General Motors, General Electric, Berkshire Hathaway, Fannie Mae, Ford Motor, and Hewlett-Packard.

Could we be persuaded that more and more companies are making for a better world?

In China the picture can also be depressing, for fabulous wealth is being generated in a few sectors: real estate, petroleum, coal mining, tobacco, and distilling.

According to the latest report of quarterly earnings of listed companies in China, food and beverages companies are becoming one of the few sectors registering growth in earnings, chiefly because the 14 listed liquor companies have seen robust growth in their earnings.

Kweichow Moutai is the only company in China's bourses whose share price has exceeded 200 yuan (US$32), having soared 50 times since it was listed 11 years ago.

According to analysis, the net profit of the top two Chinese liquor makers surpassed the combined net profits of all the 43 domestic home appliance makers listed in the two bourses.

For your information, Moutai is the beverage particularly favored in expensive official banquets hosted at public expenses.

At a ceremony this week in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, Fenjiu, another top liquor brand, kicked off its construction of a 3.5 billion yuan Fenjiu Cultural Complex complete with office buildings, a five-star hotel, and a public square themed around the distilled spirit.

As we know, liquor and tobacco are fascinated with charities, Project Hope Schools, and other public welfare projects.

They are so enthusiastic because they face restrictions in directly advertising alcohol and nicotine.

According to the authors, corporate leaders face several challenges in their CSR campaigns, such as finding the right social issue to support, creating effective programs, and evaluating them.

Real priority

Corporate social initiatives fall under two categories: marketing-driven initiatives, and corporate-driven initiatives.

Market-driven initiatives include case promotion, cause-related marketing and corporate social marketing.

Corporate-driven initiatives include corporate philanthropy, community volunteering, and socially responsible business practices.

"A company's participation in social initiatives can have a positive impact on prospective and current employees, as well as citizens and executives," the book claims.

Which means that hype about social responsibility and charitable enterprises can help boost the bottom line.

That's why while most customers believe businesses have social responsibilities beyond generating profit, the alleged corporate social initiatives generally provoke more cynicism than kudos.

If we examine the Fortune Top 500 list, it is not difficult to see that the fastest growth sectors in the world are exactly those that are ruthlessly making profits at the expense of the environment and totally disregarding whatever social commitment they may flirt with.

Rather than anticipate an improved world in which CSR-aware companies discipline themselves, a more probable solution would lie with the government, which has the power to ban, to tax, or to penalize.

At least in China, the top of the agenda today is not to encourage companies to do good, but to devise effective deterrents so they will not do wrong.

Nike, the world's largest athletic footwear company, was recently fined 4.87 million yuan for selling sneakers of lower standard in China at a higher price than those marketed in other countries.

Nike is not alone in resorting to this pricing strategy to extort exorbitant profits.

It has also been revealed that the same cup of Starbucks coffee is 75 percent pricier in Beijing than in the US.

Like Moutai, making these items pricier makes them appear classier, and more sought after.

That's outrageous, but they are quite innocuous next to real estate tycoons, coal barons and power brokers.

The hype about CSR suggests once again that in a world dominated by capital, nothing is too sacred that it cannot be profaned in the service of profit margins.