ABSTRACT
The Italian method of environmental accounting is only partly original in terms of instruments, although it can be considered different from those of other northern European countries in relation to business pressures and business strategies. This chapter focuses on three areas of management accounting that are or will be particularly relevant for Italian companies: environmental reporting; environmental costing; and capital budgeting. Bilancio ambientale can be considered as a very basic and simple strategy tailored to track figures as inputs and outputs of a certain production process, site or corporation. Identification of the cost of inefficiency, will probably become quite common in companies that have adopted the philosophy of Total Quality Management, that are familiar with the concept of the 'cost of non-quality' and therefore likely to identify the 'cost of non-environment'. Italian Petroli operates a distribution network for oil products with more than 2,800 petrol stations and a number of storage terminals disseminated throughout Italy.
