A New Approach to Motivate Micro and Small Enterprises for Resource-Efficient and Cleaner Production in Jordan

Some 500 million micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMES) are active across the globe. Data for Europe suggest that MSMEs are responsible for 40–60% of industrial pollution. Resource-Efficient and Cleaner Production (RECP) has been empirically demonstrated to mitigate waste generation, wastewater discharge, and emissions in industrial processes while maintaining cost-effectiveness. RECP has been applied in several thousand enterprises globally. RECP has shown the potential to reduce waste and emissions from industries by up to 30%. Applying RECP to MSMEs has some restrictions: the availability of data, the limited capacities of management, and limited financial resources make RECP application in MSMEs generally more challenging compared to bigger enterprises. This calls for the development of RECP approaches dedicated to MSMEs. This paper describes the systematic development of a delivery approach for MSMEs in Jordan. The results show that by minimizing the time required from management, active involvement of owner/managers, provision of tailored information on applicable options, and involving other stakeholders such as chambers and financial institutions, enterprises can be involved in big numbers with very reasonable efforts, reaching remarkable results.