Environmental Management Accounting Procedures and Principles

Environmental Management Accounting
Procedures and Principles
For the material flow balance, it is recommended to enlarge on a sector-specific basis the
standardized input-output framework. Figure 23 shows an example for breweries.
5.5.2. System boundaries
The essential system boundary for corporations is the company fence and the balance sheet.
In-depth data are not often available, i.e., balance sheet data for sites within the corporation.
In addition, data from suppliers and consumers are not available, which is why life-cycle
costing as well as Iife-cycle analysis continually fails due to problems of data availability. For
comparison and benchmarking projects, it is important that the participating sites have a rough
process flow chart scheme. Only when the range of products, including the packaging, are
homogeneous will it be possible to have valid data. Outsourcing of critical processes, like
transport and delivery, cleaning and sanitation, etc., significantly influences material input and
emissions data.
Breweries provide a good example of these effects. For data comparison between production
sites there is a significant difference whether, for example, a malting house is a component of
the brewery or whether the brewery acquires its malt from external sources. Similarly, it is of
importance for comparison of water and energy data whether bottling occurs on all or only on
certain sites and whether all sites bottle in glass or aluminium cans or kegs. In Austria, most
breweries also have a non-alcoholic production line for lemonade, which can also distort
comparison. Figure 24 shows the production flow scheme of a brewery.
Still, most corporations and products are more complex than breweries, so the definition of
system boundaries has to focus on specific process steps for specified products and defined
product life-cycle stages. When comparing companies and products with regard to
environmental performance, it is essential that the system boundaries upstream and
downstream are identical. But big organizations tend to include most product life-cycle stages
within their own production plants, while small companies are focussed on specific production
steps and outsource other production steps.
With increased product stewardship and product-service systems, where the ownership of the
product remains at the producer and the service is delivered to the customer, EMA will be
enlarged by a further component, dealing with the costs at the product use phase. This
influences system boundaries when comparing different sites, as the expenditure occurred in
the product use phase would have to be separated.
Outsourcing of critical processes with effects on technology and emissions has also become
popular recently. This is often the case for electroplating processes, which, because of
tightened legal compliance requirements, is not continued in outdated on-site equipment, but
provided by specialized firms. If the new supplier is equipped with modern technologies better
than the old devices, outsourcing can actually be environmentally beneficial. But, the effect
can be opposite too.
For performance evaluation and product life-cycle assessment (LCA), the production steps
and processes covered by the companies or product systems analyzed must be carefully
defined so that the production steps covered by an input-output analysis are identical. Figure
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