The aim of the paper is to discuss issues related to the criminological aspect of the phenomenon
of environmental crime, especially taking into account the economic, industrial and cultural
context. The author shows that all of these social categories have equal influence on the
occurrence of the studied phenomenon and that mentioned social categories deserve identical
treatment while considering phenomenon in question. In this paper, a number of important
issues related to the normative side of environmental crime was considered in order to analyze
the norms of criminal legislation, administrative rules and procedures at the comparative level
and ratified international documents. The cases of non-compliance with certain documents, even
by the leading countries of the world, have been pointed out, which implies that there is still a
need for further development when it comes to the system of compliance with the normative
framework. Critical analysis of environmental crime was supported by corresponding
criminological theories and relevant statistics in order to validate the hypothesis of interaction of
the social-economic influences on the environmental crime and their equal importance. The
author specifically emphasizes the importance of environmental awareness, since the paper has
shown that the shortage of such awareness opens up opportunities for the escalation of socioeconomic
factors leading to environmental crime and represents a kind of general precondition
for conducting such crime.