There is often a gap between the environmental concern and performance of leading multinationals and large companies, and that of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The largest companies have both the resources to invest in environmental action and the visibility to motivate such action. Small companies, which represent a major part of industrial activity around the world, have neither. How to get the positive experience of businesses at the cutting edge of environmental involvement to filter down to the mass of industrial activity in SMEs below them is one of the unresolved challenges of the moment, though attempts are being made (EEA 1998).
This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities. Agenda 21 recommends that industry and business associations should encourage individual companies to undertake programmes for improved environmental awareness and responsibility at all levels, so as to make these enterprises dedicated to the task of improving environmental performance based on internationally accepted management practice.