What Is Environmental Accounting?

Environmental accounting is accounting that measures the impact of the activities of a particular economic entity on the environment. Assessing the environment and measuring the environmental impact is a comprehensive socio-economic estimate, and it is difficult to combine individual specific economic entities. Therefore, even when measuring environmental impact, it is difficult to take it as the object of environmental accounting. However, the environmental issues that have become the object of environmental accounting must be directly and indirectly discussed with the activities of individual economic entities. Environmental accounting is the accounting that measures or reports the environmental issues related to an individual economic entity separately or separately from the estimation of the unit's financial operating results. In particular, environmental accounting has to find out how companies treat this new social responsibility. This is a new accounting issue that emerged in the 1970s. Although the information accounting born in the 1960s has put forward the idea of including environmental accounting, the formal establishment of environmental accounting has yet to be recognized by society. ^[1]

Environmental accounting is a professional accountant that takes accounting elements such as environmental assets, environmental costs, and environmental benefits as its accounting content. Environmental accounting

In China's current accounting system, an accounting system supporting environmental protection costs has not yet been established, and only the "sewage fee" and "greening fee" items have been set up in the "management cost" account of the enterprise, the former only refers to the sewage discharged by the enterprise in accordance with regulations Expenses, the latter refers to the expenses incurred by the enterprise in greening the plant. So we should pay attention to

Green accounting, as a branch of accounting, is the product of a combination of environmental issues and accounting theoretical methods.

Green accounting is based on the deterioration of environmental resources and criticism of traditional accounting.

We must fully understand the necessity of establishing China's green accounting. The first is the requirements put forward by China's current environmental situation. The development of science and technology, the increase in population, and the expansion of social demand have resulted in the extreme exploitation of natural resources and their depletion. Environmental pollution is becoming increasingly serious, which fundamentally restricts economic development and the improvement of people's living standards. Green accounting can guide and supervise enterprises to protect resources and maintain ecological balance through certain social and economic activities. The second is the requirements of the company's own development. The traditional enterprise development model is high input and low output, which will inevitably cause excessive development and consumption of resources; high pollution and low benefits will inevitably cause the ecological environment compensation capacity to seriously lag, which hinders the development of the enterprise itself. In the long-term interests of the company, only by increasing investment in environmental protection and paying attention to green accounting can we always maintain a competitive advantage. The third is the need to correctly measure the gross national product and production costs of enterprises.

Green accounting can accurately reflect the gross national product and production costs of enterprises by calculating the social resource costs of enterprises, and promote the exploitation of internal potential of enterprises and the maintenance of social resources and the environment. The fourth is the inevitable result of the expansion of corporate responsibility to society. Economic development and the diversification of people's needs require companies to change from purely pursuing the speed and efficiency of economic development in the past to the pursuit of coordinated development of the economy, society, and the natural environment. At the same time, they must shoulder social responsibilities. Reflect and control the relationship with the ecological environment, calculate and record the company's environmental costs and environmental benefits, and provide information to the outside world on the performance of corporate social responsibility. The fifth is to correctly calculate the business results of the enterprise, accurately analyze the financial risks of the enterprise, and comprehensively evaluate the needs of the business manager's performance. When calculating operating results in the profit and loss statement, only by taking the cost of the company's environmental impact as a deduction of income, can the company's operating results be correctly accounted for; In order to obtain a true and reliable asset-liability ratio and accurately analyze the financial risk of an enterprise. Green accounting reveals the information of corporate social responsibility, which can comprehensively evaluate the performance of business managers from a social perspective, not just from an enterprise perspective.

To create China's green accounting, the following principles should also be followed. The first is policy principles. That is to say, the requirements of national policies, policies, laws and regulations should be reflected in the green accounting. The second is the social principle. To reveal the responsibility of enterprises for resources and environment, green accounting must require companies to consider the performance of the company from a social perspective. The evaluation of an enterprise should be based on the social profit that can match the social income with the social expenses within the enterprise. The accounting information provided by them should not only serve internal enterprises, but also help macro management and regulation. The third is the principle of combining learning with innovation. That is to say, the construction of China's green accounting cannot be followed in its entirety. It should be continuously innovated, developed and improved in accordance with China's specific conditions. The fourth is the principle of combining compulsory and voluntary, that is, government accounting management departments and environmental protection departments must make clear and compulsory regulations on the minimum disclosure of enterprises. Of course, if companies actively disclose as much environmental information as possible, the government and the public should support and encourage it.

The Chinese government should also take corresponding measures. The first is to modify the accounting method. The inclusion of green accounting and supervision in accounting law has undoubtedly established its status and role in legal form, and is also the most powerful means of putting it into practice. The second is to improve accounting standards. It is to include the content related to the environment into the accounting elements, which must be disclosed, to prevent short-term behavior of relevant departments and units. The third is to establish an accounting system. The accounting system is designed in accordance with the relevant environmental principles specified in the accounting standards, making environmental accounting operable and easy for accounting personnel to master. The fourth is to give a clear price signal. To a certain extent, the government tries not to use or use free measures for the use of resources. Free is only applicable to inexhaustible and inexhaustible resources. Free consumption of limited resources will undoubtedly lead to its exhaustion and deterioration, and it is also not conducive to the measurement of green accounting. Fifth, there should be adaptive accounting theory guidance. That is, the government is required to properly guide the accounting theory to do some research on green accounting in order to improve China's green accounting theory level and promote the early integration of green accounting theory with accounting practice. ^[4]