With Regard To Sewage Treatment Plants, Environmental Cost Accounting Study

Good environment is the base of sustainable development, the sustainability of development in turn cannot be realized without excellent quality of the environment because damage to the environment will have a major impact on the life of human beings. Nowadays, with the rapid development of economy, the resources are increasingly wasted and the environment is worsening. The issue of environment is of great significant for human beings, especially for the enterprise which is the micro economy entity who paid more attention to economic returns than environment benefits.In order to effectively manage environment , the Environment Accounting (EA) was born. Environment cost accounting is playing the most important part in it. Now the research of environment cost accounting is in the pioneer stage in our country, focusing on theoretical studies and macroscopic aspect rather than practical problems and microcosmic aspect which make the administrator of every enterprise ignore the influence of enterprise activities upon environment.This dissertation firstly summarizes the backgrounds of Environment Accounting , introduces the concepts of environment accounting , environment management accounting, environment cost accounting etc. After that it introduces some theories and researches by such countries and organizations like US, Japan, Germany, and the United Nations, then reviews some methods of environment cost accounting developed by them. According to《Guide to Corporate Environment Cost Management》of Germany, I suggest a new method for the environment cost which is on the basis of material and energy flows and ABC. Finally, a case study is conducted with the methods concerning the environment cost accounting in a typical sewage plant in Beijing with the survey information and data. This dissertation analyzes the information collected from the company ,identifies activity cost centers, relevant cost drivers, and uses new method to calculate total environment cost, unit cost of production and unit environment cost of production. Comparing to traditional method, I find out the advantages of the new method which can support the management business and decisions making effectively. The conclusion can be drawn according to the result of the study that new method of environment cost will not only be good for business but also the sustainable development strategies.