Around 85 percent of the total population in Sweden today lives in an urban environment. This means that the nature within the urban areas has come to play an important role for the human well being. At the broader picture, the nature within urban areas is profitable in many ways. It is therefore important for the municipalities around in Sweden to work for sustainability within the urban areas. Linköping adopted an environmental policy, in year 2001, from the delegate of the municipality.

This thesis is a product of research about how implementation issues occur due to the relationbetween bureaucrats and politicians. Our study treats the democratic dilemma that occurs whenschools are to implement environmental certifications. Through a comparative study we comparetwo schools in Norra Hisingen, a district in Gothenburg municipal where one of the schools iscertificated and one is not. By using theories from top down and bottom up approaches toimplementation we develop key factors that will lead us to answer our research questions.Through text analysis of policy documents and through interviews with bureaucrats we analyzewhat may be the causes for only one of the two schools to be certificated though Gothenburgmunicipal wish all schools to be. Through our analytical tool we can establish that the policydocuments are well formed according to our top down-theory and that these documents does nothave a major impact on the fact that one school is certificated and one is not.

Assessing the outcome of corporate responsibility is often argued to be complicated due to long-term effects and qualitative aspects. Epstein (2008, p.261) establishes that: ?Though many think that sustainability is too difficult to measure, companies have found that unless the impacts are measured, they are commonly ignored in the resource allocation process?. Corporate responsibility is often referred to as a business case, i.e., that social and environmental concern add value to the business (Heikkurinen, 2010; Porter & van der Linde, 1995). Hence, for corporate responsibility to be a business case a strategy, corporate structure and systems, programmes and actions linked to performance measures need to be in place to assess the outcome; environmental, social as well as financial.

Many companies have historically forced their interests through without any thoughts about the future needs of the humans and the society. In the last few years voices have been raised for a change, companies need to take their responsibility regarding sustainable development.The purpose of the report is to describe and explain possible relations between sustainabil-ity performance of companies and profitability, valuation, industry and size respectively.To be able to judge the sustainability performance of the companies Folksam (2006a) have been used. This is a solid investigation of the companies listed on the A- and O-lists of the Stockholm Stock Exchange by the end of 2005. The sustainability marks have been com-pared with the chosen key values for each hypothesis respectively. With this quantitative data as foundation, a quantitative approach and a deductive method have been used.In the first area of the investigation, profitability, the authors found correlation for the main hypothesis between sustainability performance and ?Return on Total Assets? through a statistical test.

The nitrogen cycle in freshwater bodies is complex and consists of many separate processes affected by a number of important factors for example oxygen concentration in the water, temperature and circulation. Knowledge of the different components of the nitrogen cycle exists; however, a complete and comprehensive picture is difficult conceptually as well as theoretically. The available literature illustrates that the research on nitrogen and the related freshwater processes is still associated with high uncertainty of how much of the supplied nitrogen from the catchment is transported with the water versus and how much is lost due to denitrification, sedimentation or uptake by plants. This report is an interdisciplinary survey of Nitrogen discharge permitting. The research focuses in particular on the decision-making process, the levels of scientific standard and the administrative framework.Application for Nitrogen discharge permits are decided by the Environmental Court with council from their own experts as well as relevant government authorities and organisations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how activities in elderly care matters to well-being among elderly people, from both user perspective and staff perspective. The study is made out of a qualitative method, this to create a deep-going understanding of how the people participating in the investigation are experiencing the impact of activities on well-being from their unique situation. Personal interviews have been used as method. Six persons were participating, three elderly persons and three persons working as staff. All interviews were made in a ?short-time? ward in the county of Västernorrland.The result of the investigation shows that the elderly people that were interviewed not directly related the participation in activities to feelings of well-being.

The increasing public concern regarding the government?s priorities in spending public resources puts pressure on public organisations to address quality issues in their practice. In United Kingdom both BRTF (Better Regulation Task Force) (BIS, 2005b) and the Hampton report (BIS, 2005a) highlighted management and quality problems in public organisations in UK. These reports revealed obstacles within institutions? intent to offer recommendations and appropriate solutions for agencies working with legal enforcement and control.

There is an irregularity in the interregional migration in Sweden. An increasing proportion ofthe population is drawn to the metropolitan areas, which creates problems for the smallermunicipalities and towns when their population declines. At the same time, our whole societyis faced with a great challenge: we need to redirect towards a sustainable development, wherethe environmental issues are discussed and dealt with to secure that all present and futuregenerations are given equal opportunities to live a good life.The aim of this study is to, focusing mainly on the environmental dimension of thesustainability concept, examine the attractivity of housing with sustainability claims. Toanswer this, three research questions were used:? Was the migration motive to reduce their environmental impact a part of the decision tomove, among migrants who had moved to housing with sustainability claims?? If the motive was a part of the decision, how much impact did it have compared to othermigration motives?? Which factors in housing aiming at sustainability are considered important by peopleliving in housing with sustainability claims?The research questions have been answered using quantitative data, gained in the form of selfadministeredquestionnaires which were distributed in four different residential areas withsustainability claims in the county of Västra Götaland, Sweden.

It gets more and more important for companies to get involved in Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, when stakeholders now are more aware of the responsibility companies should take. Through their communication companies show how they take responsibility. Reflected by their goals by which they want to achieve acceptance and understanding through an open dialogue. The paper examines this issue. CSR is an abbreviation for Corporate Social Responsibility which is engagement in responsibility for companies and organisations.

Fuel produced from renewable resources is of big interest. In this project the difference between a few different renewable materials are compared on the matter of environmental load when ethanol is produced. The renewable materials that are compared are Salix, straw and reed canary-grass (rörflen). The cellulose in the material is cut down to small pieces and then hydrolysed so that the sugar from the cellulose can be fermented into ethanol. Tha amount of ethanols that is studied in this work is the smount of ethanol needed to cultivate 1000 ha. The functional unit in the report is 1000 ha.

Through extensive research it has shown that today?s sail boat owners are very frustrated concerning the limited choice of engine alternatives offered by today?s market. Besides rising fuel-costs, environmental awareness is very important in today?s society. Hence it is vital to find alternative environmental-friendly motors and replace combustion-engines. Zilent Ocean is an extensive project within Development engineering program at Halmstad University.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how five works of fiction about anorexia and bulimia have been received in Swedish daily press reviews. The investigation is based on 60 reviews, which are analysed with a qualitative method consisting of close-reading and where a feministic perspective is used. The main question concerns how and to which extent the basis of valuation in the reviews is effected by the fact that the books describe a primary female world of experiences. The investigation shows, among other things, that many reviewers consider the books about eating disorders to be too many. They categorize the books about anorexia and bulimia as a genre of its own and place the books into the literary system principally by referring to other books about anorexia and bulimia.

The environmental monitoring in Sweden has been developed by several different parties and is now being coordinated and made more effective in order to meet the current demands on high quality information regarding the state of the environment. Sweden has been divided into five different water districts based on watershed areas because of requirements in the Water Directive of the EU. In Sweden there are two common types of environmental monitoring programs used to gather information on changes in time and in space. Currently both these two types are used for lakes in the water district of the western sea but only one is used for watersheds. The purpose of this report is to supply basic information regarding the possible need for a second environmental monitoring program for watersheds in order to better describe the spatial variation within the district as well as to determine the number of samples necessary in order to describe the district over time and space.

The new technology brings new opportunities for the language. The language, which is used when chatting or messaging, is full of linguistic devices, which facilitates writing and saves time and space. The purpose of my investigation is to find out if the chat- and- messaging- language is affecting the students' way of writing in school.To find out about this I have examined 79 essays written by students in grade 9 during the national test 2006. I have also to found out if the occurrence of these features differed between boys and girls. In addition, I have let the same students who have written the essays answer questions regarding their chatting- and messaging- habits.The conclusions I have attained through my investigation shows that 58 % of the students are using features which are typical in chat and messaging language.

There is an irregularity in the interregional migration in Sweden. An increasing proportion ofthe population is drawn to the metropolitan areas, which creates problems for the smallermunicipalities and towns when their population declines. At the same time, our whole societyis faced with a great challenge: we need to redirect towards a sustainable development, wherethe environmental issues are discussed and dealt with to secure that all present and futuregenerations are given equal opportunities to live a good life.The aim of this study is to, focusing mainly on the environmental dimension of thesustainability concept, examine the attractivity of housing with sustainability claims. Toanswer this, three research questions were used:? Was the migration motive to reduce their environmental impact a part of the decision tomove, among migrants who had moved to housing with sustainability claims?? If the motive was a part of the decision, how much impact did it have compared to othermigration motives?? Which factors in housing aiming at sustainability are considered important by peopleliving in housing with sustainability claims?The research questions have been answered using quantitative data, gained in the form of selfadministeredquestionnaires which were distributed in four different residential areas withsustainability claims in the county of Västra Götaland, Sweden.