A joint implementation of ecological footprint methodology and cost accounting techniques for measuring environmental pressures at the company level

The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework and a practical methodology for evaluating the environmental pressures associated with company production. The model is based on the joint implementation of the ecological footprint accounting framework and cost accounting techniques. The methodology of cost accounting is applied by companies to determine the monetary cost of their products. These techniques are adopted by business administrations in cases of complex production activities, where the presence of processes with loops and feedbacks, of large infrastructures and multiple outputs make normal cost assignment too simple to correctly quantify the final costs. This paper adapts such monetary techniques to the purpose of measuring not the economic but the environmental costs that are quantified thanks to the adoption of the ecological footprint accounting framework. To test our model we have applied it to the evaluation of the ecological footprint of the Italian railways: a case study representative of a complex production chain in that it involves the environmental evaluation of a large network utility, characterized by joint production, by multiple outputs and by a great distance between initial environmental costs and final outputs. The results are shown in comparison with a previous analysis on the same subject. Finally, the paper discusses major potentialities and limits of the joint implementation of ecological footprint methodology and cost accounting techniques.