ABSTRACT
This chapter covers a field study conducted in a manufacturing unit of Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Project Pvt. Ltd, India, and examines the feasibility of implementing environmental management accounting in Indian environment. Material flow cost accounting was popularized in Japan by the combined efforts of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Environment. To hold organizations liable towards their share of environmental aspects, EMA needs to break away from the economic perspective of waste and evolve as an umbrella framework to provide information on the externalities that the disposed waste produces. The contrasting practice of voluntary environmental reporting and statutory nature of cost accounting practice limits the scope of Indian organizations to experiment with new ideas in cost accounting. United States Environmental Protection Agency was the first agency to promulgate environmental cost accounting and its deployment within firms to generate environmentally sensitive cost information.
