SUSTAINABILITY HURDLES
Why is there Limited Implementation of Sustainable Green Solutions?
SMEs have developed many sustainable green solutions that are not being implemented for various reasons. These include:
- A lack of capital and financing options
- Limited acceptance by governments
- Excessive regulations implemented by bureaucracy
- A tendency for governments to focus on large expensive green projects promoted by multinational corporations due to their effective lobbying
- Dealing with one large corporation that can create hundreds of jobs instantly is often easier for governments than working with many SMEs.
While access to finance for R&D, innovation, and market studies is readily available, a significant proportion of the financing is typically placed upon the SMEs, keeping the innovative SME sector hopeful but barely alive. This approach is a relatively inexpensive way for governments to keep employment up in the SME sector, but there are almost no implementation funds available for green technologies developed by SMEs.
It is also questionable whether large oil and chemical companies want to see many of these solutions implemented because the consumption of their environmentally unfriendly products would decrease, and they would be forced to change their business models.