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6C - LCA and Economics: Input/Output Analysis (TUP/217) Computer-aided resource efficiency accounting: How to combine ecological information about live-cycle assessments of products with a company's traditional cost and activity accounting. Orbach, Thomas1, Busch, Timo1, 1 Wuppertal Institute, Wuppertal, Germany ABSTRACT- The Eco-Efficiency & Sustainable Enterprise Group at the Wuppertal Institute has developed the concept of Resource-Efficiency Accounting (REA). The core thesis of this concept is: For exploring all ecologically sound cost reduction potentials within a company, economic and ecological aspects have to be considered simultaneously and life-cycle-wide. Based on this assumption, the idea of a new project was born: How can the ecological information about live-cycle assessments of products be combined with a company's traditional decision-making indicators? Therefore the computer-aided resource efficiency accounting (care) project was launched and funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. The CARE project aims to develop an economic and environmental information system. The core task is to generate an integrated information system that combines data on material and energy flows of the whole life cycle of a product with corresponding costs within an enterprise. The ecological dimension of REA is based on the MIPS concept. Thus, products, services and infrastructure are compared on the basis of their life-cycle-wide material input per service-unit. The service-unit as the functional unit ensures the comparability of different products delivering the same service. The data required for an economic evaluation is gathered from different sources. Information about cost accounting, material flows and material properties can be generated by accountancy and/or the company's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Due to the amount of data - especially in companies with many different supply chains in several countries - resource efficiency accounting requires IT systems for operational realisation. The purpose of the project is to bring the information to the decision makers in companies. This combination of economic indicators with internal and external data on environmental issues provides the companies with a basis for their long-term decision-making process. The results are used for a standardised environmental performance evaluation and for strategic benchmarking of different product alternatives as well as different units of a company. Key words: cost, accounting, efficiency, resourse |
