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Sustainability & Legislation |
Do you know that since 1986 the NSW government has passed 68 acts relating to the environment? And in that time the federal government has passed 19 environment related acts. That’s a lot of change in environmental legislation in just over two decades.
The NSW Business Chamber has released a study ‘Environmental Law and Small to Medium Enterprises in Australia’ which found;*
- Business must be prepared to operate within this changing and expanding legislative environment.
- With the emerging legislation and regulation compliance will become a more complex and costly task, especially for those businesses that have not been keeping pace with the key environmental issues of energy efficiency, waste minimisation and pollution control.
- All levels of government are becoming better resourced and a tighter regulatory environment.
- The growth in public interest law, increasing environmental regulation can only continue to further impacts on local business.
- Small to medium enterprises should prepare themselves for increased regulation in the use of energy by business so they are competitive when state or national emissions trading schemes are introduced.
- Small to medium sized companies do note have access to the same level of resources that large corporations have to position themselves for the risks and opportunities that climate change presents.
- Little analysis done on how the implications of climate change will affect business in terms of changes in operations required to reduce green house gases and water usage.
* Sourced from NSW Business Chamber “The Challenge of Green Tape: growth of environmental law and its impact on small and medium enterprise across Australia” August 2007 (full report here)
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