From goals to actions: Insights on how European SMEs plan and implement sustainability projects

Rising energy and material costs, new reporting requirements, limited resources, increasing product quality demands as well as higher customer expectations on climate action and social standards urge the manufacturing industry to continuously take action. Especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are challenged by the need to identify the relevant action fields for their sustainable transition in the midst of political initiatives such as the “Green Deal”. In practice, sustainability projects experience different consecutive stages and their goals and content might change over the course of the project. Based on data from the EU-funded “greenSME” fast-track sustainability projects, a self-assessment of the sustainability pathway of European SMEs is developed and conducted. This includes development of the action plan and the final implementation of the actions. Within the actions, companies could have decided to concentrate on one or several sustainability dimensions with the help of advanced technologies, social innovation or environmental services. Findings reveal discrepancies between the initial self-assessment goals and the practical implementation outcomes among European manufacturing SMEs. The highest implementation rates were observed in areas such as worker skills and training (105%), Life Cycle Assessment (85%), resource management (42%), and Internet of Things (39%).