Quality of physical environmental management accounting information: Lessons from pollutant release and transfer registers

Abstract

It has been claimed that in many cases the quality of pollutant release and transfer register (PRTR) information is hard for recipients to assess, thereby leading to poor-quality information driving out good-quality information (Schaltegger and Burritt 2000:334). In this paper an assessment of recent PRTR developments in a cohort of international countries is examined in order to assess the contemporary quality of PRTR information. The paper provides an overview of each PRTR system, comments on the usability of pollutant release and transfer information based on a set of criteria including understandability, relevance, reliability and comparability; examines data measurement processes and reveals several data quality problems still needing to be addressed. Developments in Australia, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA) are examined and conclusions drawn about the future for PRTR physical environmental management accounting information, including the potential for the linkage of PRTR data with materials flow cost accounting.