Across the pond : a comparison of the Mexican & British SMEs and their dealings with sustainability.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are widely recognized as an importantpart of the worldwide economy, acting both as the backbone of local economiesand as consumers of natural resources. In light of this, since the 1990’s,research to investigate how to make them more sustainable through the use ofsustainable design tools, has been carried out. This paper reports the findingsfrom a doctoral research project which aims to investigate how sustainabledesign has been introduced into British SMEs and whether these approachescan be transferred to their Mexican counterparts. Whilst it is recognized thatBritish and Mexican SMEs have different contexts and challenges, initialresearch indicates that they share common goals and may face similarproblems in the way that sustainable design is communicated to them.The objective of this paper is to present commonalities between both contexts,analyze the common issues that SMEs in both countries face and explore theexistence of a possible gap in the current attempts to apply sustainable designin the Mexican context. It concludes that the lack of access to a network ofsources of information is hindering the process for many SMEs.