Reducing the Effect of the Seven Green Wastes Through Green Target Costing for Promoting Sustainability

General Background Proactive environmental cost management during early product design is crucial for curtailing manufacturing waste and ecological degradation. Specific Background In Iraq's manufacturing sector, the Seven Green Wastes (SGW) remain significant environmental burdens rarely addressed in pre-production accounting. Knowledge Gap Empirical evidence linking Green Target Costing (GTC) to specific waste reduction and quantifiable sustainability performance in Iraqi textile firms remains acutely limited. Aims This study investigates GTC's capability to eliminate SGW during the design stage and its subsequent impact on sustainable performance. Results Utilizing PLS-SEM on survey data from 46 managers, the analysis confirmed GTC explains 57.4% of the variance in SGW elimination, which in turn drives 40.8% of the variance in achieving sustainable corporate outcomes. Novelty This research demonstrates that converting qualitative environmental compliance into design-stage financial parameters transforms ecological side-effects into controllable, eliminable operational losses. Implications Manufacturing managers must embed environmental cost metrics into initial target costing phases to systematically internalize waste reduction, securing both operational cost savings and long-term sustainability. Highlights: Integrating environmental parameters during early product design transforms ecological degradation into controllable, quantifiable production losses. Applying proactive financial strategies at the design stage accounts for over half the variance in eliminating operational manufacturing waste. Systematically curtailing energy, water, and material losses directly drives robust improvements in overall corporate sustainability performance.