Environmental Accounting Methods and Their Contribution to Reducing the Costs of Environmental Pollution Resulting from the Activities of Industrial Companies

An Exploratory and Analytical Study of the Industrial Companies Operating in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Abstract

- The research aims to answer a main question (Do environmental accounting methods contribute to reducing the costs of environmental pollution resulting from the activities of industrial companies in the field under study?) Where the aforementioned question summarizes the content of the research problem that simulates the suffering of traditional accounting and within long and successive stages of neglect. The contents of indirect environmental costs, and this neglect may be reflected in the outputs of the accounting system as inaccurate and non-comprehensive on the one hand and thus generate correct decisions on the other hand, as well as contemporary trends on the importance of assessing environmental pollution and environmental pollution costs caused by the activities of industrial organizations, which confirms that The presence of methods for measuring environmental pollution and accounting for it is an absolute necessity within the system of the administrative accounting system within the framework of what is known as (environmental accounting). In order to answer this question, a group of industrial companies in the city of Sulaymaniyah was selected as a field for the study and a source for obtaining the primary data collected by the questionnaire distributed to (12) industrial companies. (53) Valid for statistical analysis, and the research has adopted to achieve its objectives and reach answers to the research problem, the descriptive analytical approach, as it includes the use of multiple research tools such as interviews with the respondents and the adoption of a questionnaire form to collect the required data with the aim of analyzing it to reach the results of the study in its theoretical and practical aspects. A hypothetical scheme for the research was formulated that reflects the harmonious relationships and influence between the research variables (environmental accounting methods and environmental pollution costs), which resulted in a number of main and sub-hypotheses that were tested by adopting a number of statistical tools, and its results confirmed in support of the hypotheses of the study and the positivity of its objectives and the validity of its plan. The field results were consistent with the objective of the theoretical research, which proved the existence of a relationship between the variables studied. The study reached a set of conclusions, the most important of which are: The method of calculating the environmental balance can be viewed as the most important and effective in interpreting the changes associated with reducing the costs of environmental pollution, given that this method can express a means of controlling environmental influences. In the light of the conclusions reached by the study, a number of proposals were presented, the most important of which is related to the need to pay attention to the contents of environmental accounting in general, and to pay more attention to the practices of environmental accounting methods in particular, to achieve a kind of compatibility with the nature of the work of the researched organizations and the environmental challenges that they may face in order to reach Achieving the desired harmony between its industrial activity on the one hand and its environmental commitments on the other hand.