Sustainability and Hungarian companies

21% of enterprises make it a priority to manufacture products from recyclable materials, 36% do this occasionally and 43% don’t care about it. Companies employing fewer than 11 people (26%) and 151-250 people (23%) are the most dedicated in this respect. 34% of firms manufacture eco-friendly products or offer green services. 62% of companies with 151-250 employees belong to this category. These findings show that green efforts and sustainability measures depend very much on company size – and on the sector in which the given company operates, e.g. the recent introduction of stricter building rules made many firms start building in a more eco-friendly way.

Is it important to protect the environment?

25% of enterprises have EMAS or ISO 14001 (environmental management system) certifications. While only 11.5% of firms with fewer than 11 employees earned such certificates, 72-29% of those with more than 150 workers are certified to be environmentally conscious. What do these companies do to reduce their environmental footprints? 56% often take steps such as doing selective waste collection, installing energy saving lighting, etc. and 32% do it from time to time. 76% of companies with 151-250 employees regularly do something for the environment and 18% act occasionally. Retailers and service providers are the most active in this domain, 62-64% very often protect the environment, and 22-23% do it often. Data indicate that micro-, small and medium-sized businesses only occasionally engage in environmental protection, but larger companies are more active in this field.

What is the impact of climate change?

There is relatively little information available on what Hungarian companies think about climate change, and whether they do anything against it. A 2020 survey conducted by the European Investment Bank (EIB) found that Hungarian firms care less about environmental problems than the EU’s average. However, most of them do feel the impact of the climate change, as it is very well indicated by the fact that 50% of them have environmental targets – the EU average in this respect is only 41%. On the contrary, only 16% of companies calculate with climate change having a big influence on their business operations, while in the EU this proportion is 23%. A mere 18% of Hungarian firms have invested in environmental protection programmes already (this less than half of the EU’s average), and 35% plan to realise such investments. As a conclusion, we can say that Hungarian companies see little motivation for making green efforts, and they don’t really notice the long-term impacts of climate change, which is quite understandable: most Hungarian SMEs are fighting for survival in the rapidly changing business environment. //

This article can be read on pp 62-66 of Trade magazin 2022.08-09.