Accounting and financial reporting for environmental costs and liabilities

Environmental financial accounting deals with accounting for and reporting on environmental transactions and events that affect, or are likely to affect, the financial position of an enterprise. One of the challenges is to ensure that 1) environmental costs and liabilities are accounted for by following relevant accounting standards or, in their absence, generally accepted accounting practices, and 2) the meaningful disclosure of the environmental performance of an enterprise is provided. A further challenge is to ensure that appropriate management accounting procedures are, where necessary, developed, and used, for instance, to cost out pollution controls, to compare alternative materials that can be used in manufacturing, and to investigate recycling alternatives.