Globalization of economy is a reality that every region, country and company is facing. One of the globalization's points of view is the environment that strongly depends on industries' behavior and the utilization of natural resources. In fact, management has more social responsibilities because environment is a public good. To improve environmental sustainability, industry's management must be responsible by caused environmental facts, and must explicit them in financial statements. The majority of developed countries follow the rules of financial accounting harmonization made by international organizations, namely the International Accounting Standard Committee (IASC). In this context, the present paper studies environmental sustainability, based on an original survey distributed among the more potential polluting Portuguese industries. It evaluates the industries' behavior regarding the environment and presents the correlation between financial accounting harmonization and environmental polluting facts. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.