Use of corporate environmental tools in the perspective of industrial symbiosis

The Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) proposes appropriate voluntary tools that allows companies and public administrations to be supported in the accounting of all the environmental variables involved in production processes. They are recorded both in terms of input and output, therefore as withdrawals and releases of materials and substances in the ecosystem, with an eye on the economic aspect and the other on the purely physical/environmental one. These tools monitor and evaluate the eco-sustainable performance and policies of public bodies and organizations in an effective manner, orienting company policies, investments and activities towards a proactive approach aimed at a continuous improvement of environmental performance.The aim of this paper is to propose the adoption of voluntary EMA tools to a Sicilian company operating in the waste-to-energy incineration sector, through a study aimed at re-elaborating and classifying the main business information suitable for quantifying specific environmental performance indicators, in the compartments of water, air, soil and waste. The company chosen is GE.S.P.I. S.R.L., located in Augusta (SR), leader in the sector in southern Italy and owner of the one and only plant for incinerating special waste (hazardous and non-hazardous) in the Sicilian territory. The proposed environmental accounting tools become an important means for decision-making support and sustainable communication with local communities and institutions, with the purpose of evaluating future corporate structural investments able to pay particular attention to environmental performance. Therefore, a strategy is applied with the objective of correctly informing stakeholders about the eco-sustainable business management; this method is effective for the resolutive support of production, organizational and management processes between different companies operating in the same territory, thus facilitating the start of processes of industrial symbiosis with a view to improving the well-being of the entire society