The implementation of economic activities at the present stage of society development is associated with the need to comply with a significant number of legal restrictions in the field of environmental protection, designed to motivate the subjects of such activities to environmentally responsible behavior. In the Russian system of legal coordinates, such restrictions are mainly concentrated in legislation in the field of environmental protection and industry-specific natural resource legislation (water, forest, land legislation, legislation on subsurface resources, and on the animal world). However, the establishment of environmental and legal restrictions is not an end in itself of the legal regulation of environmental protection. Performing a preventive environmental role, environmental and legal restrictions are aimed at creating conditions for preventing and minimizing the negative impact of economic activities on the environment, ensuring the sustainable development of the country. The methodology of the study of the identified problematic issues included both general scientific and private scientific methods of cognition (formal-legal, system-structural methods, functional, etc.). The methodological tools used by the author allowed us to assess the current state of the system of environmental and legal restrictions in Russia, to identify problems that reduce the effectiveness of their application. The article examines the content and system of restrictions on economic activity established by environmental legislation. It is concluded that the social orientation of environmental and legal restrictions on economic activity is predetermined by the subject area of their action - social relations that develop in the process of environmental protection, as well as the goals and objectives of environmental law at the present stage of its development. Some problems of applying environmental and legal restrictions of economic activity, as well as criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of their action, are identified.