How Worried Are Small Businesses About Environmental Regulation?
We’re heard a lot recently about the supposedly dire effect of environmental regulations on small businesses. A recent poll of small business owners by George Washington University using the Thumbtack site has some interesting findings about this.
One of the questions in the survey was, “How important are the following issues to the success of your business?” Environmental regulations ranked eleventh on the list of concerns nationally. What about the ranking for small businesses in California, which is a national leader in environmental regulation? Also eleventh. How about swing states? Twelfth.
At least if you listen to small business owners, environmental regulations just don’t seem to be the problem that some people make them out to be. Now, if you’re talking about oil and coal companies, that might be a different matter. But they’re not small businesses.
In terms of the reliability of the survey, I’m no expert. But the sample size was large. This was an internet survey of six thousand small business owners across the country. It wasn’t a true random sample, but the individual demographics and firm characteristics were close to the national figures. So the results seem fairly reliable.
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About Dan
Dan Farber has written and taught on environmental and constitutional law as well as about contracts, jurisprudence and legislation. Currently at Berkeley Law, he has al…
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Does not sound like they interviewed mfrs- my brother owns a small mfg business in Mass and here is his take
I don’t think they polled manufacturer’s. A lot of small stores are retail or other non environmentally concerned businesses. Thus far I have been fined by DPA, hassled by OSHA, instituted tight restrictions and reporting requirements on our use of toluene , being required by EPA to treat all of our water rinsing operations from our etching areas and pay Consultants at Occuhealth to test our water and monitor our discharges and file our quarterly reports. We spend a lot of money on these items that 10 years ago were non-existent. We pay more to get rid of our water than what we pay for the chemicals we buy that we rinse in it. In fact the water comes into this building out of spec for copper concentrations but we are not allowed to discharge it without treating it first. None of our competitors in China do that. I am glad I am retiring soon. It is getting to be too much paper and money to contend with.
Does not sound like they interviewed mfrs- my brother owns a small mfg business in Mass and here is his take
I don’t think they polled manufacturer’s. A lot of small stores are retail or other non environmentally concerned businesses. Thus far I have been fined by DPA, hassled by OSHA, instituted tight restrictions and reporting requirements on our use of toluene , being required by EPA to treat all of our water rinsing operations from our etching areas and pay Consultants at Occuhealth to test our water and monitor our discharges and file our quarterly reports. We spend a lot of money on these items that 10 years ago were non-existent. We pay more to get rid of our water than what we pay for the chemicals we buy that we rinse in it. In fact the water comes into this building out of spec for copper concentrations but we are not allowed to discharge it without treating it first. None of our competitors in China do that. I am glad I am retiring soon. It is getting to be too much paper and money to contend with.