Extended Producer Responsibility (ERP) is a form of product take-back regulation that requires the producers to manage their products at the end of life. By internalising the products? entire life cycle costs into the market price the ultimate objective of such regulations is to reduce the environmental burden from the products. This Master´s thesis seeks to examine if the total life cycle cost of a product actually is borne by the producer, and if not, predict who will then take this cost. This is done by analysing the market for take-back activities in three different categories of products; electrical and electronic equipment, cars and wind power stations.

This thesis provides a good introduction to the American environmental certification system LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and trough compar-isons between Sweden and the United States an explanation to the systems design is given. The work is closely linked to a LEED Core & Shell project in Stockholm, Swe-den, where the goal is to reach the second highest rating in LEED - Gold.This thesis gives a broad description of the LEED system and a more profound study of the energy sector, Energy and Atmosphere. Here, for example, an analysis has been made of how the energy consumption of an imaginary building designed according to the requirements of the BBR (Swedish building code) performs in comparison to the Baseline building in LEED.The existing model of Borgarfjord 3, which served as a case study in this work, has al-so been modified to investigate the energy savings that could have been achieved by adding extra insulation to the building. A description of the problems, regarding how the Swedish district heating system (DES) is treated in LEED, is given as well as the suggested modifications. This is an issue that will be pursued during the process of shaping a new, international, version of LEED due to be launched 2012..

In 1999 the childbearing increased, which in combination with the closure of a number ofpreschools led to the shortage and reduced capacity in available places for youngchildren. The lack of places in preschools has led us to try to find a solution to theproblem and in order to solve the problem we have interviewed personnel of preschoolsin Halmstad. The persons we met were asked to list advantages and disadvantages oftheir preschool and also to come up with innovative solutions and new ideas of how todevelop a satisfactory preschool. This was the basis for us when we drew our drawingsand our main objective was to find a new template for the development of pre-fabricatedpreschools.When drawing a new and modern preschool a number of considerations have to be made,first of all the main objective for the children is play and playtime, a second objective issound reduction and laws about sound reduction. Another consideration is how toconstruct the building and which method to be used, for instance should industrialtechniques be considered and pros and cons be listed.The main disappointment amongst the preschool personnel was that they had noinfluence in the planning stage of the new development of the preschool.

There are several man-made environmental problems in today?s society. Tourism gives a lot of people serenity, creates jobs and better social circumstances but also has a dark side, a dark side that is harming our environment. Mass tourism creates large amounts of harmful gasses through transportation of tourists, littering ends up in pollution and acidification and the list goes on. Ecotourism has during the latter part of the last decade been marketed as a counter pool to the harmful kind of tourism and offers connectedness to nature.

ISO14001:2004 : A Human Ecological Tool?This is a study by means of litterature analysis and personal experience to find out wheather you could call ISO14001:2004 a Human Ecological tool. The ISO14001 is an environmental management system. I'm approaching the issue from a users' perspective and putting my experience of implementing the ISO 9001 at my work to good use. Though my personal experience is limited to the implementation of the ISO 9001, it is quite relevant to the task since the update of 2004 the ISO14001:2004 is brought closer to the ISO 9001 standard in many ways.

The objective of the essay has been the studying of the importance of religion for children. To answer and satisfy my objective, I have some questions: How do children talk about their own and others? religions? In what way do children associate themselves to religion? Which meaning does religion have for children?s identities? Which thoughts rise about religiontuition in the school?To answer the problem formulation, I have done a qualitative interview study with five children of different religious and cultural backgrounds in a Swedish communal school. The results showed that children?s thoughts about religion are mostly inherited from the parents.

There's no doubt today that mankind has contributed to the changing climate byher use of fossil fuels. This must change in the nearby future. The Europeanleaders are expressing concern that renewable energy sources are not beingused to their full potential. The 2001/77/EC Directive on Electricity Productionfrom Renewable Energy Sources was accepted in 2001 to encourage thedevelopment of energy production from renewable sources, which isconsidered a step towards the fulfillment of the goal of the Union, that 12% ofthe gross energy consumption should come from renewable energy sources bythe year 2010.The objective of this thesis is to illuminate the common legislation of the EUregarding renewable energy with regard to goal fulfillment, judicial quality,conflicts with other goals of the EU and other faults. The objective is reachedby a hermeneutic study in which interpretation of written text is the mainmethod.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the difference in value generation and its drivers between leveraged buyouts and listed companies. The primary objective is to observe if differences exist. A secondary objective is to understand the differences and attempt to provide an explanation based on earlier research on Private Equity. A selection of large Swedish LBO-transactions, carried out between 1998 and 2012, are analyzed and their value generation drivers subject to comparison with a weighted index of companies listed on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm. A clear difference in value creation is observed, both in size and composition.

The purpose of this study is to examine how Viking Line, Tallink Silja and Birka Cruises work with economic and environmental sustainability, and also to see how they work with new environmental legislations. In 2015 a new environmental legislation will be introduced, by the name Sulphur directive. The Sulphur directive entails a reduction in Sulphur dioxide emissions from ships where the emissions cannot exceed 0,1 percent. There are three alternatives to achieve the new environmental legislation, the use of Marine Gas Oil, LNG or scrubbers. All three alternatives will lead to increasing costs for the shipping industry.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to find out which portfolio theory one should use during a financial crisis. We will examine two different portfolio theorys, the Minimum Variance portfolio and the beta portfolio.We have chosen to study two different portfolios, and followed their development during the financial crisis with its start in 2008 and the IT bubble with its start in the middle of 2000.The data has been collected from OMX internet database making it quantitative study. The beta portfolio's objective is to follow the index and the Minumim Variance portfolio´s objective is to spread the risk by investing in stocks with low volatility. By following the two different portfolios, and compare the development to the index, we will be able to determine which theory is most suitable to use during a recession. The studyperiods we chose were both in a recession and it turned out that the most appropriate portfolio to use was the Minimum Variance portfolio because stock in this portfolio tends to be less sensitive to economic fluctuations..

The urgency of sustanible development is world-over issue. This essay focuses on the relations of enviromental ethics in the context of the Swedish upper secondary school and the subject of geography, by analysing different educational texts.The purpose of this essay is to reveal and identify discourses of enviromental ethics in curriculum documents; Lgr 11 and the plan- and the coursedocuments for the subject of geography, in educational publisher?s textbooks and in sponsored texts related to the subject of geography and finally to discuss potential consequences this might implicate for education. For this have the methodology of Norman Fairclough´s critical discourse theory, CDA, as well as a matrix of environmental ethics, based upon Mikael Stenmarks classifications of enviromental ethics, been used.In the Cirriculum, Lgr 11 and documents for the subject of Geography, and in the educational textbooks from ?Liber? and ?Gleerups?, are the environmental ethics of intergenerational anthropocentrism the dominant.

Our common future involves many important challenges. People and nature need to improve the relationship in order to reach an ecologically sustainable development. In a society where consumption of products steadily increases, the consumer awareness about social and environmental issues connected to the products becomes an importent factor. More and more companies choose to work more actively with these issues and more and more products get labelled by some of the eco labelling organisations. From the cradle to the gate means that a study has been done on a part of a products life cycle.

The use of environmental management systems, and objectives-led corporate management have become a widespread phenomenon today. Identification and assessment of an organisation?s significant (environmental) aspects is crucial within this work. Identification and especially assessment of significant aspects is often considered as a problematic step in many organisations. There are no generally accepted methods how to undertake this crucial step.

Elite sport is becoming more professional, and elite athletes have to be more committed to spend several hours in training to achieve elite level and this means that the time to pursue a university academic career to the side of elite sport is minimized. Still only few elite athletes will be able to make a living of their sport. The objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of the opportunities and difficulties for a student who combines academic study with elite sport. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with eight students studying at the University of Umeå, combining elite sport with academic studies. Results show that there are high demands on elite students to structure and plan for the combination of studies and elite sport.