Environmental accounts for households: A method for improving public awareness and participation

Recently the European Council agreed on a CO₂ reduction target of 10% by the year 2010. In accordance with this, Denmark decided to reduce its CO₂ emissions by 25% over the same time period. One important element of both the European and Danish agreements is energy saving in industries and in private households. Typically industries and private households are also expected to participate in other kinds of environmental improvements, e.g. waste treatment. Such improvements in environmental performances are normally accounted for. In industry, for example, green accounting or environmental auditing are techniques used to measure progress in environmental performance. But when it comes to the environmental performance of people or households very few book-keeping principles have been developed. This paper describes a Danish share-housing project's efforts to formulate an environmental policy and outline an environmental accounting system which can keep track of a household environmental record. It describes the environmental accounting methods, the results and experiences from its first five years.