This study aims at examining the prospects for a policy transfer of a Swedish municipal environmental policy (that of Växjö) to the French urban commune Blois, for which an ambition of becoming a leading eco-city in France, was declared by the mayor in 2008.In the analysis, emphasis is laid on mechanisms to institutionalize the main environmental policy principles, such as political and institutional structures and processes. Other prospects for an institutionalization of a new environmental policy that are to be investigated are economic structures as well as visions of the different decision-makers concerned. Research methods used in the study are qualitative interviews, document studies and a questionnaire.The findings of the analysis show that today?s prospects for an environmental policy in Blois close to that of Växjö, are clearly limited. The limitations can partly be found in economic structures but these seem to be rather related to a lack of priority amongst actors.

This essay discusses the interaction between the authorities in Nacka municipality in Sweden and supervisors within the eldercare. In Nacka politicians have gradually started delegate responsibility for how care-giving for the elder should be done and focus instead on formulating economical objectives and overall rules. It is up to the approved supervisors of eldercare to deliver good care and quality. The method chosen to accomplish this is public choice. This method is a part of the big New Public Management (NPM) reform which have had a big impact on Swedish public sector since the 1980´s.

The purpose of this study was to understand how the concept of quality as an idea was spread to and translated in municipal elderly care. A central question was: How does literature, policy documents and key people describe the function and meaning of the concept of quality? The method of analysis was a qualitative case study with a critical discourse. The theoretical framework of the study is mainly what is known as institutional theory and a line of thought describing how ideas are transferred and spread. The theoretical focus is on how original ideas are interpreted and why they gain a foothold in new contexts.

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/EC) was incorporated into the Swedish legislation in 2004 through the ordinance Förordningen om förvaltningenav kvaliteten på vattenmiljön (SFS 2004:660). The objective is that all water bodies shall reach a good status by the year 2015. In Sweden the comprehensive plans of the municipalities can play a large role in reaching these goals. A comprehensive plan deals with the long term water and land use of the municipality, which can facilitate an early consideration of water management in the planning process of the municipality. In Sweden five river basin districts have been established in accordance with the Water Framework Directive.

This paper is about how transport companies in the future will be able to adapt their activity to an environmentally sustainable development without the effect of negative company economic consequences. Today, the environmental threat is a global problem and knowledge about that effluent of carbon dioxide have a negative impact on the climate is generally known. A transport system that works well is important for Sweden, but the sector has a negative impact on the environment. Regulation and legislation for increased environmental requirements often meets resistance and fear that the work will be hampered by increased costs for environmental work that can lead to an international decrease in competitiveness. The transport companies have outside pressure from the society to do something about the environmental issue, however the companies? customers are not ready to pay a higher price for environmental work.

The environmental work of companies has become an incredibly important factor in achieving reduced levels of environmental pollution. For companies the work on environmental issues began in the 1980s. During this time companies also began to show interest for the personnel, an interest that was shown in the form of attempts to disclose personnel information in economics. Earlier this information was separated from the financial information, despite the fact that the revenues are created by the employees.The purpose of this paper is to examine how well companies with a notification or a permit today account for environmental- and personnel information in their director?s report.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how disabled people who receive the shut-in-service in one community define service quality. The purpose is also to examine the shut-in-service and to look at the users' context. Answers are sought to the following questions: - How do users experience the service quality of the shut-in-service? - What kind of service does the shut-in-service offer to the user? - How can the user be described and which are his/her requests? The analysis is based on theory about service quality by Christian Grönroos. The theory makes a distinction between two kinds of service quality, technical vs functional quality, as experienced by the user through the profile of the organization.

The purpose of this study is to examine if the experience of whale watching can lead to increased knowledge of environmental problems. We also want to find out whether increased knowledge in turn could lead to changing environmental attitudes and behaviors. The theoretical framework consists of theories about sustainable tourism, ecotourism and responsible environmental behavior. The paper also has a section where previous research on ecotourism impacts on behavior and attitudes is discussed and subsequently addressed in the analysis section.Data has been collected through a case study where seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals who participated in whale watching. The results show that all respondents had greater knowledge of whales by their experiences, the degree of knowledge was due to respondents' prior knowledge.

In the last few years the environment becomes more watchful, even for us farmers. All agricultural enterprises that exceed 200 animal units must be tested according to regulation of environment. A farm business with 200 animal units and more is classed ?environmentally hazardous activities? and has to make an environmental impact assessment for the business you have today, and the activity after expansion. Before you can construct a building and expand the numbers of animals is a lot of applications to make. I have in this project restricted me to establish a environmental impact assessment and a consultation foundation. To make a environmental impact assessment is the big part of the application. The environmental impact assessment take a lot of time and you need skills for all the rules in the environmental code to be abele to make an environmental impact assessment approved. The environment codes purposes (1 kap 1 § Miljöbalken) is to rule the laws. The purpose of the environment code is to promote sustainable development which will assure a healthy and sound environment for present and future generations. Definitions of a ?environmentally hazardous activities? 9 kap 1§ Miljöbalken) shall mean the discharges of wastewater, solid matter or gas from land, buildings or structures onto land or into water areas or ground water.

Several thousand years of human impact on the landscape in the form of cultivation is the reason to many nature- and culture values in the agricultural landscape today. Intensification and rationalization has led to vast monocultures and has forced many farms to close down. These trends have increased in the last years and constitute great threats to the values of the cultivation landscape. The purpose with the environmental objective A varied agricultural landscape is to protect these values. The environmental action plan of the municipality of Lund (LundaEko) 2006-2012 is built on the 16 national environmental objectives. The purpose with this paper is to put together material that the municipality of Lund can use in their work with modifying the local intermediate goals for the environmental objective A varied cultural landscape. The overall issue for this paper is ?What has happened with the state of the cultivation landscape in the municipality of Lund since LundaEko was approved in 2006?? The paper seeks to portrait the current conditions of the following fields: meadows and pastures, organic farming, exploitation threats to agricultural land, landscape elements with cultural values and species that are threatened.

The environment became an established issue on the international political agenda after World War 2. How to preserve natural resources became an issue that concerned several powerful participants, affected by changed conditions in the environmental legislation. This paper is a study of the growing environmental work within the multinational Swedish corporations Boliden, IKEA and SAS and how it was affected by the globalization. The material studied is environmentally related information produced by the companies and also interviews with the Environmental Managers. The information provided has been analyzed and compared with well-known opinions of globalization, trying to find out how the process of globalization has affected the handling of environmental work within the companies.

Concerns for the environment and our impact on it are becoming more prevalant; however, we rarely act accordingly. Consumers mainly choose products based on perceived personal benefits despite the environmental motives that increasingly affect them. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the major drivers behind the purchase of ecological wine. A quantitative study was conducted, using Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as an initial starting point. The subsequent model was then completed with three variables: environmental concern, feelings and word-of-mouth.

The project this report is handling has been implemented on NBB, Nordisk Bilbelysning AB in Linköping. The company produces and develops lightning and searchlights for all types of vehicles. Lately NBB´s supplier of electronics, OSRAM, has developed a mercuryfree xenon lightsource. Mercury is one of the most hazardous environmental waste and to get rid of the mercury entirely in the lightsource is a big step that means alot for the environment.This lightsource will be placed in one of NBB´s worksearchlights called My, and will be sold as an alternative to mercurycontaining searchlights. NBB wants to put an environmental label on this product and they want to have essential information about the product that is needed for the production.

The representative democracy has become weakened during the last decades. At the same time the United Nations declared at the Rio de Janeiro meeting in 1992 that environmental problems can best be solved by involvement of all concerned citizens in decision-making. The main purpose of this study has been to examine if citizens panels is a possible way to involve citizens in environmental decision-making and what the outcomes can be. Furthermore the study has investigated what the participation has contributed to environmental politics and how representative the results have been. This has been carried out by investigating the Piteåpanel in the municipality of Piteå by conducting interviews.The result of the study shows that the involvement of the citizens in the decision-making influenced the environmental politics of the municipality.

This thesis examines the environmental benefits resulting from the choice of environmental certification scheme, with focus on energy. This was carried out by studying the measures that were implemented as a result of the certification of Sweco's three largest office buildings in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. The office property in Stockholm has been certified with the Swedish Environmental Building, Gothenburg with the British BREEAM and Malmö with the U.S system LEED.The results from the study indicate that an environmental certification can reduce the energy consumption by up to 59 percent and the water consumption by 20 to 66 percent. However; the interviews, literature study and simulations in MATLAB indicate that the size and scope of these environmental benefits depend on several identified factors: the type of building and its conditions, system selection, grade level, the choice of indicators, the ambition of those involved and when in time the certification process begins. The comparison between Environmental Building, LEED and BREEAM showed that Environmental Building for the office property in Stockholm gave the largest environmental benefit in terms of reduced energy consumption thanks to several large measures.