You don’t have to have been there to realise that the Suffolk Carbon Charter was probably designed by a committee.  And a large one at that.  Worthy in intent but wieldy in practice it’s a lot longer than it needs to be and has the obligatory quantitative measures in place to increase credibility.  There’s intrinsically nothing wrong with this except it means that the process to achieve and maintain it is equally cumbersome i.e. measures are only meaningful if taken by an expert.

Part of this is due to the big business backgrounds of those that usually design these schemes.  An accurately titled article in HBR (A Small Business Is Not a Little Big Business) accurately describes resource poverty and other SME unique issues and is relevant now as it was when written. 

How many small businesses have written policies on anything?  Not many that I know.  Most manage through people not paper.