Abstract:

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are an important part of the world economy but they are thought to be responsible for a big part of all carbon dioxide emissions and all pollution. Small and Medium Enterprises traditionally find it more difficult to implement green initiatives than their larger counterparts because often have major problems with limited resources, limited knowledge and limited technical capabilities to deal with their own negative environmental impact. Yet under these conditions they are all expected to engage in environmental improvement.

The paper has a dual focus. Firstly, it aims to evaluate the factors that are important for the implementation of green initiatives in small and medium enterprises from Romania, respectively producers of electrical and electronic equipments. The motivation is the fact that decision to implement green initiatives is a difficult one and is based on a lot of criteria. Secondly, it evaluates the weights assigned to the decision criteria on the basis of the opinion of experts from SMEs and using the method Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP).