Accounting Policies and Sustainability Reporting

Running head: ACCOUNTING POLICIES AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING 1
Accounting Policies and Sustainability Reporting
Name
Institutional Affiliation

ACCOUNTING POLICIES AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
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ACCOUNTING POLICIES AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
Executive Summary
The paper presents a comprehensive examination of accounting policies alongside
sustainability reporting as used in BlueScope Company based on its annual report and corporate
social responsibility report for the period 2017/2018. The discussion is section in terms of
questions one to six. It has addressed the measurement and recognition constituents of policy for
accounting of PPE and also compared the accounting policies for each class of PPE. It has also
commented on the governance mechanism available on BOD to address sustainability as well as
showed how the BlueScope risk management system is addressed and incorporated in
sustainability reporting based on ethical and CSR. A discussion about the guidance used by
BlueScope to implement social and environmental performance alongside reporting system has
also been presented. The comparison of variation in voluntary disclosure across industries and
companies have also been performed.
Introduction
The report presents answers to the seven question in section A: Part B, Accounting
Policies, & Sustainability reporting with reference to BlueScope Company. The reference is
made to the annual report to address the requirements in questions (i) and (ii) while corporate
social report is used to address the requirements in questions iii to IV.
QI.
The PPE remains stated at the historical costs minus accumulated depreciation alongside
impairment (Alayemi, 2015). The cost of PPE encompasses expenditure which is directly
attached to the items’ acquisition. Cost further includes transfers from equity of gains or losses
on PPE foreign currency purchases’ qualifying cash-flow hedges. The succeeding cost remain

ACCOUNTING POLICIES AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
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encompassed in assets’ carrying amount or recognized as the separate asset, as deemed suitable,
solely where it remains likely that future economic benefits linked to an item shall stream to a
Company and such item cost might be reliably measured. Any replaced part’s carrying amount
remains derecognized. Every remaining repair alongside maintenance get charged to loss or
profits in the course of period of reporting of their incurrence (Botelho, Azevedo, Costa &
Oliveira, 2015).
QII.
The PPE remains stated at the historical costs minus accumulated depreciation alongside
impairment. In terms of depreciation, PPE remain depreciated using straight-line method over
the useful lives estimated. However, when dealing with finance leases and leasehold
improvements, shorter term for lease, except a sensible certainty exist that a Company shall
acquire possession when the term of lease closes (Bradford, Earp, Showalter & Williams, 2016).
Land’s useful lives is never depreciated whereas that of buildings is 30-40 years and iron
and steel making machinery and plant has useful life of 20-40 years. Coating lines has useful life
of 20-30 years. Building components PE have useful life of 12 to 18 years whereas other PE and
have useful lives of 5-15 years. PPE is derecognized where it gets sold or else disposed of, or
where its usage remains anticipated to bring no upcoming economic benefits (O'Dwyer &
Unerman, 2016).
The estimation of useful lives for machinery and plant is anchored on past experience
alongside judgment in regards to technical obsolescence, usage capacity and deterioration of
assets besides any legal restriction on usage. Asset condition’s assessment is performed once
every year against the useful life remaining (Rezaee, 2016).
QIII.