A research on transformation of environmental policies during the process of adaptation to european union and their effects on Turkish business sector

Environmental destruction taking place since the beginning of human history wasn?t so important until the industrial revolution. But within the process of industrial revolution, as a result of abusing natural resources and high increase of production and consumption cycle caused the disruption of environment and this thread has been one of the most important problems of mankind today.Environmental problems began to threaten humankind at overwhelming levels at the beginning of 1970s and world nations understood that they wouldn?t overcome this problem on their own. These developments led nations to take steps for the solution of this problem and they organized Stockholm Conference as the beginning of those attempts.Environmental problems began to affect Turkey in those years. But throughout these years when the environmental policies began to take place, Turkey, as a developing country, didn?t take steps other than theoretical arrangements and it dropped behind developments taking place in the world. In recent years within the process of adaptation for European Union policies, Turkey began to put environmental issues on its agenda.As one of the most important items of EU adaptation process, It is necessary to fulfill the arrangements and changes that EU determined and wanted Turkey to realize about the ?environment?. Therefore, all governmental, public and private sector institutions are responsible for the realization of arrangements and items that theoretically determined during this process.In this study, the affects of environmental policies on Turkish business sector, environmental policies of EU and Turkey and environmentally-conscious business are analyzed and some data obtained from businesses that are listed in ISO-500 are included.Key Words: Environment, Environment policy, European Union, Environmental consciousness, Environmentally-conscious Business