Cultivable land is a limited resource and agriculture contributes to some of the most serious environmental problems facing the planet like, global warming, eutrophication and loss of biodiversity. The specialized, industrial agriculture with monoculture and extensive input of external energy, commercial fertilizer, and chemical pesticides are all essentially unsustainable. An adaptation to other methods of production is necessary to preserve the environment for future generations. The aim of this study is to describe the factors that distinguish sustainable from unsustainable agriculture. The results will be used to examine if and how the European Union (EU) works in order to create a more sustainable agricultural industry and to analyze the preconditions for such development.

Car usage is determined by several facts, e.g. living conditions determined by geographical matters. There is a political will to control car usage with different kinds of incentives since car usage generates environmental problems. This essay analyses the differences between car usage in urban areas as opposed to thinly populated areas in Sweden and their significance on governmental incentives. By using statistics differences in car ownership during ten years between thinly populated areas, areas in the countryside and urban areas is studied.

The climate issue is a significant question, and the problem is mainly caused by human activities. Everyone can help to counteract the enhanced Greenhouse effect by reducing the amounts of energy they use and by not consuming more products then they need.Schools are some of societies many consumers and therefore contribute to the Greenhouse effect. The School also has an important task; to teach and disseminate knowledge and information about the climate and the environment. According to the Swedish National Agency for Education, Skolverket, must all schools regularly consider the environment and sustainable development throughout the entire education process. Unfortunately, this is not the case for many schools in Sweden today.One of many tools that can be used to coordinate environmental work and initiatives, and also to make it more efficient, is environmental management systems.

The aim with my work is to get a deeper knowledge about the preschool's views of environmental work. I also want to examine how the preschool teachers along with the children work with the project Green Flag in the preschool. I have used structured interview with two teachers in a preschool that works with Green Flag. Green Flag is an environment certification and is an evidence on that one works daily with a document aimed environmental work along with the children. I have found out that each year they work with different themes within Green Flag.

One of the main goals in this study is to investigate how young children's identity formation and social relationships are depicted by today's consumer society.  In order to reach the goals of the study I also concentrated myself on questions regarding the reflection of symbolic aspects consumption in younger children's interaction and preschool-teachers' ideas about how and in what ways children's consumption patterns are created and developed nowadays. In order to answer the presented research questions I used the theoretical arguments of researchers in the field of pedagogy Gert Biesta in connection with the ideas and concepts of the consumer society characteristics developed by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.The thesis' methodological approach consists of a combination of semi-structured interviews with teachers and observations of children's interaction, which contributed to a systematic investigation of the thesis' problem area and served as a tool for obtaining answers to the research questions.The results demonstrate that consumption occupies a lot of space in young children's lives, which means that it greatly affects their social relationships today. Both consumption and knowledge of the known brands prove to be the child's path to the desired community on the one hand, and the children's way to the consumer world on the other (hand), which in turn points to an obvious dependence between children's consumption and their social relationships.The results also show that there is a tension between the perception of identity formation as preschool-policy-document on the one hand and the attitude of the identity prescribed by consumer society norms and regulations on the other..

Because of the increasing numbers of international tourist arrivals each year it is essential that tourist operators are aware of the impacts that tourism generate. Tourism affects the world in an environmental, social and economic way, positive but also in a negative way. To travel responsible and sustainable is therefore important, and operators have a responsibility in this subject.Because of this I wanted to look at how Swedish tourist operators manage responsible tourism, together with what amount of information their customers receive about this. To be able to study how operators work with this I conducted three interviews via email. The tourist operators were of different sizes and specializations to receive a more extensive result.

This Master?s Thesis aims to illustrate in what ways the two Swedish environmental assessment tools, the Environmental Load Profile and EcoEffect differ and if performed valuations gives different results and environmental goals.The built urban environment causes about half the environmental loading in Sweden. The society?s ambition towards sustainable development has resulted in demands reducing the environmental load. One way to accomplish this change is with the assistance of tools for environmental assessment of the built environment.

?CSR and political consumption ? a study of Nike?s and Puma?s CSR-reports?The purpose of this dissertation is to examine if political consumption has influenced multinational corporations to improve their Corporate Social Responsibility reports and policies more, than a company who has not been a target for political consumption.This dissertation is a content analysis of Nike?s and Puma?s first (Nike 2001, Puma 2001) and latest (Nike 2007/09, Puma 2007/08) CSR- reports. Archie Carroll?s model of Corporate Social Responsibility is used as theoretical framework in this study. The model is used to focus on four areas within CSR; economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic.

Miljonprogram is a Swedish building program from 1964 to 1975. During that time about a million homes were constructed. Now, almost 50 years later, they are in desperate need of renovation. In order to fulfil the Swedish environmental objective to decrease energy consumption 50 per cent until 2050, considerable housing stock built under the Miljonprogram has to be renovated.Focus in this thesis is on the building services and theirs profitability that can decrease energy consumption in households build during the Miljonprogram. Building construction is not considered in this report.

The Swedish Government has decided that Wind power should have a higher contribution to the electricity generation in Sweden. Their goal is that, by 2015, the yearly production by Wind power should generate 10 TWh. In year of 2006, the 760 wind mills in Sweden generated only 0,936 TWh. Despite good wind conditions in a large extend of Sweden's land- and coast areas, the slow rate of new wind mills establishments will likely result in unattainable goals. The major problem for new establishments of wind mills is the extensive and complicated permission process. An expert group of environmental studies (Expertgruppen för miljöstudier) was commissioned by the Government to make a report concerning the problems with the expansion of wind power in Sweden.

Fältbiologer in Lund : A study on how the NGO Fältbiologerna has affected environmental politics in the municipality of LundThis paper examines, through interview and literary studies, if the environmental NGO Fältbiologerna has had any impact on the environmental politics of the municipality of Lund. The study is based on a case where Fältbiologerna were protesting against the establishment of two shopping centers near the outskirts of Lund.The study is inconclusive, but provides a few interesting questions for further studies in this subject..

The aim with this study was to collect fundamental information, and to plan, a windpower farm in Juddhult , Småland in southern Sweden. The goal is to collect the bestavailable projecting planning support. The pieces of this projecting planning supportthat will be presented is; Environmental Consequence Description (MKB), productioncalculations, comparisons between different plant types, economic calculations, evaluatethe economy and give some farm design suggestions. The imagined wind farm will belocated in forest environment and which may cause a number of new problems. Specialinterest that will be affected, where special consideration because of the forestenvironmental is requested is, hunting, wetlands, ancient monuments and windturbulence.

Important issues for the local authorities are what to do with the sludge produced insewagetreatment plants. The tax for landfill leads to higher costs with 250 SEK/ton. On the 31December 2004 it will be forbidden to landfill sludge.In Sweden the yearly production of sludge is 240 000 tons, counted as DS. The phosphorouscontent is 3 % in sludge. The total yearly production of sludge gives 6000 tons of phosphorous.

Simulation of different systems can be done using a graphical model description of the system based on block diagrams. The simulation software Matlab/Simulink offers a lot of possibilities to describe a huge number of systems, which can be linear as well as nonlinear. The simulation using Matlab/Simulink is done by integration based on different kinds of numerical methods.When nonlinear Simulink-models are simulated, it is often interesting to apply a Kalman filter to handle the noise that may occur within the process as well as corrupting the measurement. However, application of such a filter leads to an extensive time-consumption despite using fast computers. The reason is that the existing Matlab functions are not constructed for time optimal evaluation.

Product sharing systems is recently starting to become a more common phenomenon. Carpools exist in more than 40 Swedish towns and both Stockholm and Gothenburg have established bicycle sharing systems. Other products for which sharing systems have been established throughout Sweden are clothing and tools. From the point of view of the consumer, product sharing systems is a form of consumption which can be placed somewhere in between renting and privately owning a product, where the consumers usually pay a membership fee or a monthly fee to have access to the products whenever they need them. The concept is relatively new, and there are many products for which product sharing systems do not exist.