UK Business Least Green in Europe

Small Business News

British Business sees itself as the least environmental in Europe.

According to the 17th Annual UPS Europe Business Monitor, heads of British business see the UK as the least environmentally friendly country in the whole of Europe.

That's quite strong opinion when Britain is voted as the worst ahead of the old Soviet Union (although last year it was nick-named the "Dustbin of Europe".) When asked which was the country with the worst environmental record, business leaders picked the UK (14%) ahead of Poland (11%), Italy (10%) and the Russian Federation (9%)

• Strangely that opinion is not shared by all European business leaders - in the overall vote the least green countries were:
• Italy (14%)
• Greece (11%)
• the Russain Federation (9%)
• Poland (8%)
• Spain (7%)
• UK, France, Romania (each received 6% of the vote)

As for the most green countries, Germany and Sweden were voted top with 23% each followed by Norway (7%)

Environmental Issues

Opinion on green issues was that 27% of UK heads believed that environmental concerns are over-hyped, reflected by an overall 23% across Europe as a whole.

Yet 57% of UK business heads believe that global warming and environmentl issues can still be dealt with although another 39% reckon it is already too late. The view is similar across Europe except for Germany where a massive 86% of top businessmen believe the environment is beyond help; only 13% think there is still time to stop climate change.

Environmental Police

The UK is different from its European neighbours in its opinion of who should police environmental protection.

Britons think it should be the national governments that tackle climate change (43%) rather than the EU (18%). Behind the top levels of government, either national or EU, the vote falls with the International Governmental Organisations like the UN (17%) who organised the recent Bali roadmap talks, Industrial Associations (10%) or environmental NGOs (just 5%).

Europeans believe that the EU (at 43%) should be the major player in environmental protection with International Governmental Organisations at 25% and national governments at 20%.