The Great Debate: Accountants and the environment

I believe this will be a legal obligation (the secretary of state is in consultation on the implementation of carbon accounting).

Meanwhile, @UK PLC, provides spend analysis services and won a national contract so our spend analysis system is pre-approved for any public sector body.

We also provide an integrated Ethical and Environmental Analysis.

Ethical – Adverse PR and reputational damage/loss of sales caused by un-ethical behaviour being exposed to the public.

Environmental - the quick environmental wins generally produce cash savings

The spend analysis throws up common themes that will improve both purchasing and process (e.g. paying multiple prices for the same product from the same supplier or multiple delivery charges).

Today the focus is on cutting cost and sorting out the purchase to pay cycle (We provide a P2P and electronic marketplace), having a product that allows purchasing to show the organisation the daily loss due to failure to follow process is useful feedback in the process improvement battle .

It costs less that 10p per round trip for all requisitions, orders and invoices flowing electronically (All costs to customer for the entire cycle including implementation, consultancy, software, running costs and maintenance).

Clearly this reduces cost for buyer and supplier and improves processes and was implemented over 10 years by the Supermarkets. It is now achievable for all organisations.

Services can now be automated in the same way e.g.

Gloucestershire County Council have saved 1/2 a million pounds over 2 years using electronic RFQ’s to local taxi companies. The taxi companies cut empty legs so there is both a cost and environmental improvement.

We have analysed over 1/2 a million commonly purchased items cross referenced across multiple suppliers. A small percentage of suppliers have a carbon or ethical analysis. However there is enough information for sensible decisions to save money and improve the environment.

We need some clear definitions for the terms everyone uses - only then can one have the basis of a debate

For instance what precisely does 'environmentally friendly' mean - is it:

• handling our waste by shipping it off to China - benefits our enviromental credentials but offloads the problem elsewhere on the planet
• paying for a tree to be planted as an offset every time a trigger point is reached
• installing more computers/internet access - without realising the impact of server farms on the environment
• what lifecycle costs are involved - expensive production/decomissioning costs .v. cheap envriomentally friendly running costs
• and so on ......

Are savings & benefits being achieved in one area at the expense of another area, or it it real benefit - and without comparisons how does anyone know?

Furthermore, what recognised standards are in place to assess CO2 savings / emissions etc. and if claims are being made what are the benchmarks?

Without defined parameters all manner of claims can be made which are very difficult to challenge

agree with the statement but not the position the proposer has taken. Accountants I think are obliged to challenge the numbers, particularly the financial ones. That leads inevitably to the underlying assumptions, and the models they feed. Many might state that the science is a given, but the facts do not support that, and it is fact that the models that are used to support even some of the milder claims are demonstrably wrong.

This position might be difficult for some, but worth remembering that the biggest criticisms levelled at us after recent large financial failures was that we did not "blow the whistle" when perhaps we should have.