Improving a company’s environmental performance hinges on a clear assessment of the company's environmental impacts. Environmental accounting provides a new framework that allows companies to calculate compliance costs, product life cycle, and natural resources depletion. Anticipating such costs can mean big savings.

This EPA guide, written in 1995, provides an introduction to the application of environmental accounting as a managerial accounting tool for internal business decisions. Learn how to reduce or eliminate environmental costs, increase health and safety performance, and design products and practices with the environment in mind.

The guide includes a discussion of the difference between private and social costs, and compares techniques in traditional and environmental accounting. You may appreciate the full glossary of accounting buzzwords.