Environmental accounting for waste management: A study of local governments in Australia |
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Authors: | Wei Qian Roger Burritt |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Accounting and Finance, Caulfield East, Monash University, VIC, 3145, Australia;(2) School of Commerce, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, 5001, Australia |
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Abstract: | Local governments in Australia, especially in large urban areas, have faced a challenge of the growing quantity of waste generated
and the diminishing space for waste disposal in recent years. The central government has demonstrated the importance of developing
strategies to make full environmental costs and impacts of waste disposal and material recovery accountable for waste management
decision-making. However, research into this field is limited. This paper investigates environmental accounting practices
in local government waste management. From a survey conducted with local government authorities in New South Wales (NSW) Australia,
it is found that overall the level of direct waste flow and activity accounting is higher than the level of hidden and external
environmental cost accounting, though local governments tend to identify and use more physical information associated with
waste flows and activities than relevant monetary information. External environmental impacts of waste disposal are often
overlooked and show the lowest level of practices. The survey results also indicate that urban local governments have taken
more environmental information into account than rural local governments, but such difference is not significant between local
governments of different sizes. The complexity of waste technical services and operations is confirmed to have a positive
and significant effect on the level of environmental accounting for waste management across local governments surveyed. |
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Keywords: | Environmental accounting Environmental information Waste management |
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