Most SMEs increasing sustainability efforts over next 12 months, says SBI

As reported by Edie in June, research from the Small Business Institute (SBI) has estimated that 65% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are planning to do more on sustainability across the next year, with 45% having already increased their efforts in the past 12 months.

SBI stated that more than a third of SMEs believe sustainability is having an increasing financial impact on their business, becoming more important to their business over the last year.

Accordingly, almost half of SMEs (45%) have improved their sustainability efforts over the last 12 months, compared with 3% who have done less. Of those aiming to go further over the next year, 23% plan to do significantly more, with almost no SMEs saying they planned to scale back.

However, the report also revealed that many SMEs struggle with the complexity and language of sustainability, as well as lacking time, funding and accessible support.

According to recent research from Ecologi, the larger a business is, the more confident they are in their net-zero progress, with 58% of enterprise businesses saying they are on track, against 30% of SMEs.

Almost 10% of SME representatives said the company had no plan to build a net-zero strategy.

This research, conducted with 500 small business owners, comes one year on from the Government-backed Willow Review, which looked at the economic benefits for SMEs of adopting sustainability efforts. The Review found 67% of SMEs report reduced operational costs with greater sustainability adoption.

More than half of those surveyed in the Review noted that greater sustainability had also attracted more customers, with a third seeing improved customer loyalty.

Published in June 2025 and spearheaded by Small Business Britain, the Willow Review set out 14 recommendations to improve SME adoption of sustainable practices. It was created in line with the cross-government ‘Backing Your Business’ campaign to reduce technical jargon around the sustainability conversation and engage SMEs on a range of issues, including sustainability.

The UK Government responded to the Review in December 2025, and has since integrated the UK Business Climate Hub with the Business Growth Service, financed a £200,000 refresh of the Hub and launched new tools including the Giki Carbon Action planning tool to allow businesses to better identify cost savings from sustainability measures.

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