Hungarian SMEs going greener

Their most widely used green practices are buying energy-saving light bulbs, using less electricity, issuing e-invoices, offering digital payment and collecting waste selectively. The study also found: there are practices about which enterprises think they increase sustainability very much, but many of them don’t use them yet, e.g. plating trees, supporting green NGOs.

Sustainable operations are important for most firms

When asked why sustainability is important for them, 80% mentioned internal motivation, and the second most frequent answer, given by 32%, was reducing existing environmental risks. The factors that prevent them from being even greener are the lack of money and external support, and the frequently changing and rather demotivating regulations. Typically the bigger a company is, the higher the chances for allocating a sustainability budget or for applying for funding to implement such projects. Mastercard has launched a communication campaign to support the sustainability efforts of SMEs: the company’s goal with the GreenZone month is to honour those small businesses, which have already introduced green measures, and to inspire those that are open to adopting environmentally friendly solutions. //