Environmental management accounting: techniques and benefits

Increased public green awareness has encouraged business to consider environmental effects of their activities and also to take environmental matters into decision making. This paper addresses this concern by discussing environmental management accounting (EMA) as a means to separately identify, quantify, analyse and interpret corporate environmental aspects. EMA technique outlined in this study was initially set up by the United Nations Divisions for Sustainable Development (UN DSD). It focuses on technique to quantifying corporate environmental expenditures or costs for the purpose of better controlling and benchmarking. Meanwhile external costs for which firms do not legally responsible are not calculated. In addition, EMA techniques for costing analysis, investment evaluation and performance measurement also presented. EMA has been acknowledged to deliver many benefits to the users. Cost saving, better product pricing, optimal use of resources, innovation, cleaner production, increased shareholder value and improved reputation, including green public profile are potential benefits noted in literatures to date. Some case studies to date examining the benefits of EMA are also presented in this study