This guide is aimed at people with responsibility for environmental issues and reporting and will also be of value to finance functions. It is divided into two parts. The first part provides a brief introduction to the dynamic subject of organizational environmental accounting. It focuses on helping companies understand both internal and external environmental costs. The second section provides information on how to estimate an organization’s “environmentally sustainable profits,” including an external environmental cost accounting toolkit. This contains a pro-forma set of external environmental cost accounts together with a practical step by step guide, developed by the UK-based Forum for the Future, to help companies develop their own external environmental cost accounts.

The guide is supplemented by the SIGMA Sustainability Accounting Guide, which is aimed at financial professionals and users with good sustainability knowledge and summarizes the current state of research and availability of tools and approaches that help companies account for their sustainability performance.