a b s t r a c tThis paper presents a comparison analysis of eco-efficiency in the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) of Venezuela. The research can be divided into three parts: the first part reviews similar studies in the literature on the level of eco-efficiency exhibited by the companies of Venezuela and other countries. In the second place, the findings of a survey conducted on Venezuelan SMEs allowed the definition of 54 eco-efficiency profiles. Thirdly, six national experts in cleaner production and eco-efficiency were interviewed. The interview was based on a questionnaire similar to that used in the survey of the Venezuelan SMEs. At a second meeting, the experts were asked to discuss on the similarities and differences between their answers and those of the company's managers.The findings of the survey allow us to conclude that Venezuelan SMEs understand the legal environmental regulations that affect them but they do not perceive the influence of external driving forces like customers demand for green products or institutional incentives. The adoption of eco-efficiency practices is not perceived as an incentive to improve competitiveness so that the environmental strategies adopted generally aim at reducing costs or avoiding non-compliance sanctions and negative effects on the company image. Materials recycling and reuse, especially packaging materials, are common practices; however, other environmental tools or practices have not been implemented yet, e.g. environmental management systems (EMS), process, product and services design tools based on the product life cycle, renewable energy resources or green marketing. There are also differences among the eight industrial sectors analyzed, food and chemical industries having the higher index of eco-efficiency practices, and plastic and wood industries the lower.
This paper presents the findings of an exploratory study conducted to analyse the growing use of Environmental Declarations as environmental communication tools, together with the factors that have led to this situation in Europe. To do so, and focusing on the EPD programme called the International EPD System, an exhaustive analysis was performed of the evolution of Product Category Rules (PCR) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). The next step was to draw up a survey to be administered to companies that currently have EPD in that programme in order to identify the factors that led to its being chosen as an environmental communication tool, the communication channels through which they came to know about the programme, the target public of EPD, whether or not they intend to renew it and the reasons for not doing so if that is the case, and so on. Despite a progressive growth in the use of EPD, according to the companies, the main weakness of these programmes is the fact that final consumers do not know about EPD. Implementing actions geared towards raising awareness about them may therefore play a key role in maintaining and continuing to increase the success of EPD programmes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.