Are Small Firms Getting The Help They Deserve?

In a recent MORI survey, environmental issues were revealed as one of the most important business considerations facing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) today - yet many managers are apparently unaware of the key areas of environmental legislation which affect their companies.

Environmental management is now one of the more important challenges SMEs have to face (the survey ranked it higher than business investment, credit control or even exchange rates).

Legislation:

• Awareness of environmental legislation is still often lacking, with a quarter being unable to name any environmental legislation or regulations which directly affect their company.
• While two in five respondents thought that greater green legislation would increase costs, some believe that more business will be created. Forty two per cent predicted an increase in the social acceptability of their products over the next five years.

Benefits to business:

• Forty five per cent of respondents considered that having an environmental policy brings (or would bring) commercial benefit
• Among the benefits around one in five SMEs thought that 'better customer relations and/or company image' would be the main commercial advantage.
• Twelve per cent of the respondents claimed that they already made financial savings from improving their environmental performance.

Technical details

MORI interviewed 300 SMEs, by telephone, between 17 February and 17 March 1998.