Barriers and Opportunities for improving SMEs’ Environmental Performance, based on a Peruvian case study

Abstract

Presently SMEs are a big industrial sector that has an enormous relevance in Peru’s market, not just for the amount of business, but also for its important contribution to the creation of employment. Small businesses are the results of a rising entrepreneurial spirit in Peruvians, especially the poor.

This paper intends to explore the difficulties that SMEs in Peru have to face in order to adopt an environmental friendly approach while doing business. The work assesses the awareness and the knowledge of the owner-managers with regards to environmental impacts through a survey. Furthermore, in order to establish a baseline which also includes the externalities that affect SMEs, a set of specialists were contact and interviewed. All this information was used to establish inputs that were analysed with each other in order to set a strategy for overcoming the barriers and difficulties identified.

Moreover, SMEs from the UK were used as a guideline or benchmark in order to know whether their current programs and initiatives designed to reduce environmental impacts and increasing efficiency are replicable for the SMEs in Peru.