Adopting Environmental Management Accounting: EMA as a Value-adding Activity

Environmental management accounting (EMA) can be defined as “the generation, analysis and use of financial and non-financial information in order to optimise corporate environmental and economic performance and to achieve sustainable business” (Bennett et al. 2002: 1). EMA thus both includes monetary and physical accounting which is internal to an organisation and also deals with the integration of ecological and monetary issues (Burritt et al. 2002), and as such is a management activity that is relevant for both private-sector and public-sector organisations.