识别环境成本 - IDENTIFYING ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS

　　Much of the information that is needed to prepare environmental management accounts could actually be found in a business‘ general ledger. A close review of it should reveal the costs of materials， utilities and waste disposal， at the least. The main problem is， however， that most of the costs will have to be found within the category of ’general overheads‘ if they are to be accurately identified. Identifying them could be a lengthy process， particularly in a large organisation. The fact that environmental costs are often ’hidden‘ in this way makes it difficult for management to identify opportunities to cut environmental costs and yet it is crucial that they do so in a world which is becoming increasingly regulated and where scarce resources are becoming scarcer.

　　It is equally important to allocate environmental costs to the processes or products which give rise to them. Only by doing this can an organisation make well-informed business decisions. For example， a pharmaceutical company may be deciding whether to continue with the production of one of its drugs. In order to incorporate environmental aspects into its decision， it needs to know exactly how many products are input into the process compared to its outputs; how much waste is created during the process; how much labour and fuel is used in making the drug; how much packaging the drug uses and what percentage of that is recyclable etc etc. Only by identifying these costs and allocating them to the product can an informed decision be made about the environmental effects of continued production.

　　In 2003， the UNDSD identified four management accounting techniques for the identification and allocation of environmental costs： input/outflow analysis， flow cost accounting， activity based costing and lifecycle costing. These are referred to later under ‘different methods of accounting for environmental costs’。

　　控制环境成本 - CONTROLLING ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS

　　It is only after environmental costs have been defined， identified and allocated that a business can begin the task of trying to control them.

　　As we have already discussed， environmental costs will vary greatly from business to business and， to be honest， a lot of the environmental costs that a large， highly industrialised business will incur will be difficult for the average person to understand， since that person won‘t have a detailed knowledge of the industry concerned.

　　I will therefore use some basic examples of easy-to-understand environmental costs when considering how an organisation may go about controlling such costs. Let us consider an organisation whose main environmental costs are as follows：

　　waste and effluent disposal

　　water consumption

　　energy

　　transport and travel