Relationships between Solid Waste Management Performance and Environmental Practice Adoption in Welsh SMEs

Joseph Sarkis and Jeroen Dijkshoorn

International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 45, No. 21, pp. 4989-5015, 2007.

For small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) the determination of whether the adoption of environmentally supportive practices relates to good environmental performance has only been scarcely investigated.  In this paper, using an empirical sample of 299 Welsh SMEs, we investigate just this issue.  We compare SMEs that have adopted five environmental practices and those that have not and compare their environmental and economic performance using solid waste management activities.  The results show that those organizations that have not adopted these practices perform better on environmental performance measures.  The explanation, for what seems like a counterintuitive result, may be due to a reactive adoption of these practices to help mitigate poor performance on solid waste management practices.  Additional insights and managerial implications are presented since these results will help identify methods to further aid SMEs in adoption of environmentally supportive practices.

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