Environmental and Material Flow Cost Accounting

A practical how-to guide for installing or auditing corporate environmental and material flow cost accounting information systems
This guide details for companies and organizations how to install an environment and material flow-related information system that jibes with their current accounting system. It includes several case studies and offers specific recommendations.

Recognizing the increasing importance of environmental issues, energy prices, material availability and efficiency and the difficulty of adequately managing these issues in traditional accounting systems, several companies all over the world have started implementing Environmental and Material Flow Cost Accounting (EMA and MFCA).

Environmental and Material Flow Costs Accounting explains and updates the approach developed for the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DSD/UNDESA) and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and in addition includes experiences of several case studies and recent developments regarding EMA and MFCA in national statistics and ISO standardization.

Explains how to install an environment and material flow-related information system that is consistent with the accounting information system and thus auditable for environmental and sustainability reports and greenhouse gas emission permits Includes recommendations and guidelines from several case studies worldwide Up-to-date and relevant for manufacturing companies (i.e. new ISO TC 207 work item on Material Flow Cost Accounting; verification of CO² emissions, rising energy and material prices) Written by a practitioner in the field of environmental and sustainability management, indicators, auditing and reporting Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt

Foreword.- Executive Summary.- 1. What is EMA and why is it relevant?- 1.1 The issues behind EMA.- 1.2. Challenges for current accounting practices.- 1.3. Definition of environmental costs and environmental managementaccounting (EMA).- 1.4. Monetary accounting.- 1.5. Physical accounting.- 1.6. EMA Links to Financial, Statistical, Environmental and Sustainability Reporting Requirements.- 1.7. EMA uses and benefits.- 2. The input side of the material flow balance.- 2.1 Overview on material flow balances.- 2.2. Raw Materials.- 2.3 Auxiliary Materials.- 2.4. Merchandise.- 2.5 Packaging.- 2.6. Operating Materials.- 2.7. Energy.- 2.8. Water.- 3. The output side of the material flow balance.- 3.1 Products and by-products.- 3.2. Non-Product Outputs (Waste and Emissions).- 4. Environmental performance indicators.- 4.1 ISO 14031 - Standard on environmental performance evaluation.- 4.2 Environmental performance indicators of GRI.- 4.3 General requirements for indicator systems.- 4.4 System boundaries for performance indicators.- 4.5 The problem of finding a meaningful denominator.- 4.6 Calculating savings based on performance indicators.- 5. Environmentally relevant equipment.- 5.1 Classification of environmentally relevant equipment.- 5.2 Environmental investments according to SEEA and CEPA.- 6. Monetary information.- 6.1 Overview on the EMA cost categories in the Excel template for total annual environmental costs.- 6.2 Distribution by environmental domain.- 6.3 Material Costs of Non-Product Output.- 6.4 Waste and emission control costs.- 6.5 Costs for Prevention and other Environmental Management Costs.- 6.6 Research and Development Costs.- 6.7 Environmental Earnings and Savings.- 6.8 Case study of SCA Laakirchen pulp and paper plant.- 7. Linking physical and monetary information.- 7.1 Environmental expenditure in the profit and loss statement.- 7.2 Improving the Consistency of Materials Inputs and Product and Non-Product Output.- 7.3 Tracing Materials in corporate information systems.- 7.4 Cost accounting basics and terminology.- 7.5 Mapping costs centers, production planning and technical monitoring.- 7.6 Activity based costing.- 7.7 Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA).- 7.8 Investment appraisal and budgeting.- 7.9. Benchmarking production sites.- 8. Case study of a brewery.- 8.1 Working with the EMA excel templates.- 8.2 The material flow balance.- 8.3 The brewery, its production flow and cost centers.- 8.4 Total annual environmental costs.- 9. How to organize an EMA pilot project.- 9.1 Defining system boundaries and sites for pilot testing.- 9.2 Developing a project plan.- 9.3 Extracting EMA data from Enterprise Resource Planning Systems.- 9.4 Elements of an internal EMA standard.- 9.5 Summary of recommendations from case studies.- 9.6 Outlook.- 10. Annex.- 10.1 Checklists for environmental costs by environmental domains.- References.- Index.