Implementation of General Sustainability Objectives as Tools to Improve the Environmental Performance of Industry

Abstract

This article examines the implementation of the Swedish national environmental quality objectives and discusses what can be learned for the equivalent process for the set of global UN 2030 goals (SDGs), established in 2015. The empirical basis is a study on 50 large companies in Sweden and their use of these objectives in their policy formulation. The SDGs are crafted with a broader approach than the Swedish national environmental quality objectives. Therefore, the SDGs probably better reflect the agenda of the business community since they have a global character, cover the whole spectrum of important sustainability issues and provide a mutual agenda for the business community worldwide. More than 90 percent of the large companies in the study have explicitly committed themselves to the SDGs, only 1–2 years after they were published, whereas similar commitments hardly exist for the national environmental quality objectives, even 20 years after their establishment. A large majority of the large companies in this study know about the SDGs, have actively endorsed them, and started to adjust their activities accordingly. In the end, the results of these endorsements remain to be seen.