Exhibit 17-9 Non-Value- Added Cost Trends : Environmental Costs
could be the annual amount that must be set aside to have the total funds necessary to execute a cleanup five years from now. As actions are taken to improve environmental performance, the amount of future cleanup may diminish, thus reducing the annual amount to $700,000. The $200,000 trend improvement, then, is attributable
Another possibility is computing total environmental costs as a percentage of sales and tracking this value over several periods. Exhibit 17-10 illustrates such a trend graph. This graph is of particular interest because it tracks all environmental costs and not just non-value-added environmental costs. If ecoefficient decisions are being made, we should observe a reduction in total environmental costs. This implies that there is a favorable trade-off between investments in environmentally related prevention activities and reduction of environmental failure costs. The trend should be downward, as ecoefficient investments are made.
Other graphical illustrations for specific areas can also show progress made. For example, a bar graph can be used to show the total amount of a pollutant emitted on a year-by-year basis. A downward trend would be a favorable indication. Pie