Using financial management to reduce environmental waste

Dr Mukonoweshuro discusses environmental accounting
Lightbulb with soil and green plant sprout inside. Concept for environmental conservation.

Dr Rumbi Mukonoweshuro is a lecturer in accounting at Â鶹´«Ã½ Business School. She is currently the programme lead for the Accounting and Finance Bachelor of Arts degree delivered at Peninsula College, Malaysia, on behalf of the Â鶹´«Ã½. Her teaching interests, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, cover financial accounting, finance, financial markets and business research. She also supervises various research projects for Doctor of Business Administration, Doctor of Philosophy and masters degree students. Her research interests include sustainability and environmental accounting, Corporate Social Responsibility, accounting, finance, banking and microfinance.

Prior to working at Â鶹´«Ã½ Business School, Dr Mukonoweshuro worked for an accounting practice firm and, prior to that, in accounting departments for two large manufacturing companies: Logic Office Group and Delta Corporation. She is a Qualified Chartered Manager with The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and a Qualified Member of the Association of Business Executives London.

To find out more about Dr Mukonoweshuro’s work on environmental accounting and reporting, or to explore whether she could carry out research in your organisation to identify cost savings, please contact her via email.

 

Environmental accounting considers the impact of an organisation’s environmental activities on its financial accounts, exploring how a company’s engagement with activities to minimise its environmental footprint can and does affect the bottom line. Environmental accounting activity, such as audits and compiling reports for stakeholders, can inform strategy and help executive teams identify the cost savings that are achievable from such environmentally conscious activity. A seemingly win-win situation, Dr Mukonoweshuro explains how some of these approaches work.


Too good to waste

I recently conducted an audit with the NHS to identify cost savings. It involved getting my hands dirty (quite literally) looking at their waste management practices. We opened waste bins, sorted through them and recorded their contents. Twenty to forty percent of the waste generated by one hospital was used paper towels! These and other items, like disposable coffee cups, were considered clinical waste, even though they could readily be recycled. Gathering this information helped us make recommendations for cost savings.

Having established what kind of waste could be recycled we looked at the operational costs for waste disposal and energy