another finding reported by company participants is that despite comprehensive record keeping,the breakdown of all environmental costs from existing accounting frameworks was far more difficult than anticipated.
while the degree of difficulty varies for each cost category, the data required for EMA are often not readily available.
this proved to be the case for energy and water costs to assign to the material purchase value and processing costs of non-product output would have improved the derivation of additional findings. Insurance costs also represented an area requiring further attention. Better information on the full range of environmental costs is likely to become critically important in decision about new capital projects as well as in due diligence studies for corporate mergers or acquisitions.