ABSTRACT
Small companies are facing increasing pressure from regulators and suppliers to improve their environmental performance. At each level of the EMS implementation individuals receive training so that they can develop their company's system and environmental performance indicators. These allow to track and report on their company's environmental performance over time, and benchmark performance in critical areas. Inertia within such small firms is extremely difficult to overcome due to various obstacles and barriers associated with implementation, including: perceived lack of time, lack of policy and documents, lack of understanding of EMS requirements, lack of sufficient regulatory and legal knowledge, economic constraints, difficulty in defining economic benefits. Project Acorn provides a staged route to ISO 14001 certification and/or EMAS registration. In addition, one of the aims of the pilot project to develop environmental performance indicators to reflect the environmental aspects of activities, products or services. Project Acorn facilitates communication through a customer-supplier partnership addressing the environmental concerns of all parties.
