SummaryEurope?s public authorities are influential consumers. If they spend their money on greener products and services they can make an important contribution to the work towards a sustainable development. Green public procurement can thereby significantly improve the take-up of new environmental technologies. Through the effects of economies of scale, production costs be lowered and better equip us to fight environmental problems.

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 increased interest in a sustainable environment puts pressure on companies in the manufacturing industry. Rexcell Tissue & Airlaid AB (Rexcell) in Skåpafors produces paper to be converted into tabletop and hygiene products. Rexcell is certified according to the environmental management system ISO 14001, gaining competitive advantages by showing that the company works toward a sustainable environment and that they follow current legislation. The activities at the company are classified as hazardous to the environment according to the Environmental code. Every year, the activities are inspected by an independent inspector.

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.

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.

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 Swedish commercial real estate market is in the current situation globally affected and is actively interacting with the rental and capital markets through international tenants and investors who are setting new demands on the property owners. The European Union has set new requirements as well in purpose of reducing humanity?s negative effect on the climate and therefore the international real estate market has introduced Green Building-certificates in order to decrease the real estate industry?s environmental impact.Certificated buildings with low energy consumption are a more common sight in Sweden these days. The development, however, could go even faster if there was not certain difficulties between property owners and tenants. Previous research has revealed that tenants do not always have knowledge about, or may have access to the economic benefits that a green building can provide.

The purpose of this study is to further develop the understanding of Nextopia, the belief that the next product will always be better, and the effects it has on Word of mouth, both oral (WOM) and electronic (eWOM), and investigate possible causes of this effect. This has been made through an experimental study of responses to two mineral water ads, with a manipulated time frame. First, this thesis supports the fact that there is a general Nextopia-effect on customers being exposed to a future product, which makes them evaluating the product higher in terms of feelings, attitude and intention. Further this study shows that there is also a Nextopia-effect on WOM and eWOM, by customers being more likely to recommend a future product rather than a current one. This propensity to recommend the product also has a relationship with responsibility, which correlates much stronger with WOM than eWOM.

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.

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.

The business world has been through an extreme transformation over the past decades, which have forced companies to look at themselves from a new point of view. Consumers have a complete new set of ways to gather information and are more motivated than ever to make sustainable consumption choices. This change of attitudes among consumers has made companies focus on other things than price versus quality. A whole new concept has been brought up to questioning: environmentalism. Consumers demand more organically produced products.

Female growth, number of eggs and egg growth of Daphnia pulex were studied at four temperatures, 12, 16, 18 and 20°C. I hypothesized that female growth and number of eggs would be lower and the size of the eggs larger in the presence of a predator (kairomones) than in its absence. This effect was expected to be more evident at lower temperatures. I could not find any effect of kairomones on female growth, number of eggs or egg size, although there was a weak tendency for an effect on number of eggs. There was, however, an effect of temperature, regardless of predator treatment (i.

An increase interest of new methods and tools has begun to grow in the real estate business, this new trend causes an increase in new programs that aim to simplify processes of energy-efficiency and environmental issues.After consulting with Björn Alsmark from Bjerking AB, an architect and engineering company, we made a decision that the Degree Project is going to examine the program IES (Integrated Environmental Solutions) with some integrations from Revit Architecture application.To be able to examine IES, we got access to a completed project from Bjerking. The project is a nursery school in Uppsala. An application has been handed in from Bjerking to make this project to a Green Building-certificated project. According to Bjerking own calculations (with the energy-calculation program Enorm), the consumption of energy of the nursery school is 48 percent lesser than required by BBR.An evaluation of IES and Enorm has been made with an aim to compare these two programs and find out if IES is an appropriate program to replace Enorm. Does Enorm or IES come up to BBR´s recommendations?The Degree Project cover 15 ECT, that required several adjusting and delimitations, and the study sketch ended with a literature study.After finishing the study sketch the modeling of the nursery school began.

The aim of this dissertation is to examine why smaller municipalities[1] in Sweden experience difficulties when implementing the 16 environmental objectives that are designed to solve Sweden's environmental problems.The theoretical framework used for this dissertation is implementation theory which provides three conditions that need to be met in order to have a successful implementation.  These three conditions have shaped the research questions that examine if Torsby municipality has the "understanding," "ability" and "will" needed to implement the decision correctly.  The dissertation employs a case study method to examine why Torsby municipality has experienced difficulties implementating the target: programmes and strategies for planning, which is an interim target to environmental objective number 15: A good built environment.  Qualitative text analysis and interviews with politicians and civil servants from Torsby municipality and the county administration board of Värmland have been conducted in order to answer the research questions.   The material used for this dissertation is mostly from the government bills that are the foundation of the Swedish environmental policy and the documents and reports about the environmental objectives that the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (Boverket), the Swedish Environmental protection agency (Naturvårdsverket), and the Environmental objectives council (Miljörådet) have released.The result of this dissertation supports previous research which has shown that smaller municipalities have problems implementating the environmental objectives due to a lack of financial resources. This dissertation also shows that the problems can be due to a lack of understanding the purpose of the objectives.  This leads to a lack of political will to implement the objectives.  Since the municipalities do not have the political will to implement the objectives the appropriate resources needed for a successful implementation are not appointed and therefore the municipalities are not able to fully implement the environmental objectives. [1] Municipalities with less than 20 000 inhabitants..

In this bachelor thesis we have used a case study to examine the potential opportunities and obstacles an organization may have to internally implement a code of conduct with regard to the environmental guidelines. To succeed with the implementation of codes of conduct, companies need to ensure that what is provided to be implemented do this according to scheduled time targets, but also that is to be implemented in the organization actually is what is intended to be implemented, and that those that are involved in the implementation will be satisfied with result, this is because it is the employees who will follow the guidelines contained in the Code. Heide & Grönhaug (2002) argues that lack of communication is the main reason why the implementation in the business strategies fails. In this case study we have used primary data from interviews in the case company as well as secondary data from earlier research and information from the case company itself to develop our conclusions. The case study shows that the existing environmental awareness in an organization often is founded in common sense about how to act.