The aim of this thesis is to give an insight to how work is being pursued within Swedish SMEin the clothing industry. Furthermore we investigate how efforts can proceed withenvironmental questions in a quest for sustainable development and bring clarity in thedifficulties that occur. Through the use of company examples and a description of how theywork we wanted to give stakeholders knowledge in what resources and procedures that areused today on the market. The function of the report is moreover to provide Swedish smalland medium-sized clothing enterprises suggestions and directions of how to advance withinsustainable development.In our theoretical frame we have chosen to administer the theories that we found suitable forour study. Seen from a perspective of sustainability we have thus applied the theories ofstakeholder and legitimacy, an analysis model for a company?s actions in environmentalquestions and the theory of SME which describes a small or middle sized enterprise?s fivecompetitive variables.The empirical frame we acquired for this thesis is presented in three chapters.

The concepts of environmental scanning and Business Intelligence have gained increased interest over the last years in a number of different organisational contexts. The research in this field has mainly been dealing with methods and issues regarding organisation but the aim of environmental scanning, the forming of new perspectives, has been largely ignored. The purpose of this thesis is to study how Swedish joint-stock banks put environmental scanning and Business Intelligence into practice. First a literature study is made to create a background and to explain the different conceptions. Then I describe the different functions of the different services in Swedish joint-stock banks.

The purpose of this Bachelor degree project is to design different types of services that can increase the amount of re-used timber within the building sector and by that means improve their environmental efforts. By examining how the sectors environmental work concerning recycling and re-using timber as a building material is getting on at present, conclusions have been drawn about what further could be done for improvement.The project has shown that there is a scarcity of information and statistics within the sector, but that there are efforts in progress to change this. Questionnaires have been sent to a number of companies working with demolition and utilizing re-usable materials in order to find out what kind of problems there are within the trade. Unfortunately the survey gave insufficient result due to the low reply frequency.It is obvious that active environmental work within the building sector is important and the knowledge acquired while working with the project has led to the design of three suggestions for services regarded as being of interest for improving the negative environmental impact caused by the sector:Suggestion 1 ? Sale of construction parts prior to the demolition of a buildingSuggestion 2 ? Re-utilization circulation when manufacturing buildingsSuggestion 3 ? Education in relation to the purchase of houses  The positive and negative qualities of the suggestions have been examined with SWOT-analysis and further adaptions and the results have been interpreted.

Abstract: The world in which companies are acting today offers challenges in the sense that it is rapidly changing and that a vast amount of information is available. In order to ensure the competitiveness and survival of the company, an effective and efficient environmental scanning is essential to the company. Our aim with this Master's thesis is to investigate what factors constitutes important and basic conditions in a well functioning environmental scanning and how companies strategically can go about to achieve this. In order to highlight and specify how these factors can be applied on a specific company Thule has been our focal point. Thule.

With increasing energy prices and increased focus on the environment we saw the need for companies to get control over their energy use and their emission of carbon dioxid. An analysis tool that integrates both these areas is, with our knowledge, not available on the market today. Therefore, our project became to develop such a tool.By doing this degree project we would like to clarify that energy consumption and environmental impact are integrated. The less energy consumed by today?s society the smaller the environmental impact will be.

Sweden recently changed the national regulation of chimney sweeping. This study has two purposes. The first purpose is to evaluate the effect of this reform to see if the new regulation has led to an effect in terms of increased chimney fires in single-family houses and for the wood-burning and oil-burning stoves, respectively. The second purpose is an updating of a previous study (Mattsson 1994) of analysis of society´s benefits and costs of different alternative sweeping frequencies for wood-burning and oil-burning stoves. This study also has a secondary purpose to examine the extent to which the local sweeping rules vary with climate conditions.  Mattsson, based on his results, proposed that the sweeping requirements for oil-burning stoves should be reduced from twice a year to once every second year and for wood-burning stoves the sweeping should be reduced from four times to once each year.

The rural development programme is a tool for promoting sustainable development in the Swedish countryside. The master plan should, for example, give directions for the national interest and describe how it will follow up national and regional targets such as the EU's environmental quality standards. Because the municipality has considerable freedom to formulate the plan in its sole discretion, and that it contains the municipality's political vision, it is also feasible to make a discourse analysis of the plan text.In discourse analysis, including articles and documents written by Rural Network Working Group on land use planning to be included. The purpose of discourse analysis is to see if there are differences in the way rural areas are described and if there are any flaws in how the designer interprets the rural development programme. Furthermore, the analysis result in tools that are adapted to the standards we create and choose.The standards we have are being designed based on our values, which differ.

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe and analyse the effects of tourism in developing countries and the attitudes and working methods of Swedish tour operators towards sustainable tourism. We have chosen to use a qualitative research according to a hermeneutical view. We have carried through in-depth interviews with eight tour operators. The theories have been divided into the effects of tourism and sustainable tourism goals which have social, economic and environmental starting points. The empiricism describes the work and activities of the tour operators and compiles the interview material divided into attitudes on tourism effects and responsibilities.

The demand for environmental assessments on buildings and energy consumption is increasing as well as the energy performance requirements for buildings. At the same time it is increasingly common with self-producers of heat and electricity generation.The main purpose with this master thesis is to investigate how time resolution affects the environmental assessment of energy consumption in office buildings connected to district heating (DH). Environmental assessments were done with both attributional LCA and consequential LCA with system expansion.Fortum´s DH system in Stockholm was analyzed and district heating production was simulated in a Matlab-model. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the production were calculated. The heat demand of the office Gångaren 16 in Stockholm was simulated in IDA ICE.

Environmental chemicals are transported to the Arctic through the air and oceans, once within the Arctic they spread through rivers, lakes and other watercourses. Polar bears and sledge dogs in-gest high concentrations of environmental chemicals since many of the chemicals are fat-soluble and their diet mainly consists of marine mammals. The aim of this study is to describe how environmental chemicals spread in nature, how they reach the polar bears, and finally how they affect the animals reproduction, with reproductive hormones and genitals in focus. The animals are exposed to a cocktail effect which complicates the assessment of the chemicals impact on the reproduction. Studies show that the genitals can decrease in size or become malformed, sexual maturation can be affected and the reproductive hormones can be disturbed.

AbstractThe aim of the present study was to investigate if and how pre-school teachers reach the objectives in the national curriculum concerning the environmental issues.Another angle of this study is to find out if there are any involvement amongst the preschools regarding the environmental issues and if the teachers encourage the children to join in and make them a part of discussion.I have randomly chosen 10 preschools throughout Sweden and interviewed one staff-member from each school. Most of the preschools were well aware of the goals to follow according to the national curriculum.After comparing the answers my conclusion is that preschools act quite differently concerning environmental issues. Some worked almost exclusively with the children involved. Others occasionally involved the children whereas a few didn?t include the children at all.In every case the teachers would want to dedicate more time to environmental issues.

The activity of interest groups in the political process of the European Union has given rise to a broad debate concerning the effect on European democracy these groups have. As relatively powerful political actors, the question of these groups? views on the EU and how the union should be is an important one. The status of these groups owns democratic representation also affects the democratic status of the EU. Being based on a number of theories, this study adopts an ideology analysis for the purpose of testing these theories on two cases ? the Swedish environmental organizations World Wide Fund for Nature and The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.

Sweden?s environmental work is to set out from 16 national environmental quality objectives. It aims to work for a sustainable society and to solve our current environmental problems today and not pass them on to future generations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate Uppföljning av handlingsprogram för miljömål (a follow up-study of a programme for environmental quality objectives) and to propose new methods to work with the revision of Handlingsprogram ? så genomför vi de regionala miljömålen i Hallands län (a programme to implement the regional environmental quality objectives in the County of Halland), a revision which will start in autumn 2010.

Since the Bruntlandreport was published 1987, companies have shown their environmental commitment through an environmental account. Companies started these accounts because their rivals started having them and today most large companies have a environmental account or sustainable development report. The information given by the companies have been seen as slanted, and others see it only as a part of the image production for the companies. There have been several investigations of the stakeholders of environmental reports and it is not clear who is the primary stakeholder, in other words who actually reads them. All different stakeholders have different views of what an environmental account should encompass.

As the environmental awarenesshas increasedin recent decadessohas the society?s demand forenvironmentalresponsible companies(Ammenberg, 2004).One way for companies to take responsibility and work with environmental issues is to implement anenvironmental management system(EMS). EMSserves as a tool for companies to systematically work with environmental issues and develop the company's environmental efforts. ISO 14001 is theEMSaccording to whichthat the majority of companies today choose to get certified(Brorson & Almgren, 2007). The introduction and operation of the ISO 14001 requires significant financial and human resources and it can therefore be questioned whether the environmental managementsystem is adaptable forall companysizes.The purpose of this studyis to examine whether EMScan provide environmental and economic benefits for companies of all sizes and ifthe conditions to get certifiedaccordingto ISO 14001 is the same for large and smallcompanies.A literature study was made to collect information on company'simplementation of ISO 14001.