Abstract The article describes an environmental management accounting tool
and its application in the metal finishing industry. The benchmarking tool which
uses both absolute values and a relative index, monitors resource utilisation and
waste production at process-line level and plant level. The tool format is Excel, a
Microsoft spreadsheet program. The applied common denominator is the surface
area of products, and units are either physical or financial.The empirical data for the study is provided by a donor-financed cleaner production demonstration project in South Africa which ran from 2000 to 2004. The benchmarking of the metal finishing enterprises indicated potential water savings
of 60–90% and savings of chemicals of 20–50%. Modifications of selected full
scale plant for national demonstration confirmed these savings and the metal finishingenterprises have moved into the environmental sustainable production chain in South Africa and abroad.The main challenges in implementing the modifications were social barriers, data retrieval from existing production and cash flow constraints for plant construction.The principles and methodology described here can also be applied in other wet industries such as the paint, chemicals, wood, plastic, consumer products and hardware products industry sectors, in both South Africa and other emerging economies.