Implementation of environmental management accounting systems in Romanian companies – methodology and case studies

Abstract

Among the means used within the sustainable development strategy of companies, the environmental management accounting (eMa) constitutes an analytical high-rank tool helping the organisation both in managerial decision-making process and simultaneously improvement of its economic, environmental and social performance on the way toward the achievement of strategic organisational objectives. The paper presents the ECOIND experience in adaptation and integration of environmental management accounting within the strategic management system of enterprises. For the implementation of an EMA system, the following main steps are performed: identification of environmental costs, development of material and associated monetary flows, allocation of environmental costs to cost carriers taking into account the environmental principles, quantification of environmental and non-product costs in the final structure of the cost carrier, use of EMA results for decision-making processes and innovation promotion. an information collection system has to be implemented in order to collect environmental and non-product cost related information. Case studies illustrating the implementation and results obtained at two romanian economic units from chemical industry are also presented.