When the producers? responsibility for packaging was introduced in Sweden in 1994 the industry set up public recycling stations to facilitate the collection of the waste material. In order to establish recycling stations at suitable locations the municipalities assist the industry?s service organization for operation of the recycling stations, the Package and Newspaper Collection Service (Förpacknings- och tidningsinsamlingen, FTI). The objectives of this thesis are to improve the service of the public recycling stations within Lidingö town and to increase the accessibility to these stations for the inhabitants of Lidingö.

Green public procurement (GPP) can be used as an instrument to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and consideration of environmental aspects within public procurement is becoming more common in Sweden and internationally. Two product groups that have been pointed out as especially important are transports and electricity, where the opportunities for public purchasers to reduce emissions are relatively large. This paper studies GPP which aims at reducing emissions, primarily of carbon dioxide, through environmental requirements within these two product groups. A theoretical analysis of cost-effectiveness, transaction costs and effects on technological development is performed, followed by a closer study of how these aspects appear in practice within GPP. The results indicate that a cost-effective allocation of reductions between the two product groups is most likely to be attained if the main part of emission reduction is achieved through environmental requirements on electricity. The cost for emission reduction within transports is relatively high, especially for heavy transports. For transportation services, more generally focused requirements on emission reductions could probably give greater environmental gains, but the existence of transaction costs steer the environmental requirements towards more technology specific types.

The Swedish dairy sector is facing several challenges the coming years. One big challenge is how they will secure the access of their raw material milk in the future. The number of milk producers has decreased for an extended period of time, but was for a long time partly compensated by an increased productivity among the remaining milk producers. From year 2000 that trend was broken and also the quantity of milk produced started to fall quickly. Milko is a dairy company with members from Dalsland in the south to Jämtland in the north. During the first seven moths 2007, their number of members decreased by almost a fourth, from 1 272 to 974.

Abstract Contemporary cities find themselves today in a fierce competition against other cities over company establishment and in -migration. In this competition, the city?s main objective is to become an attractive site of capital accumulation.  As this happens, the pressure on the vulnerable groups in society increases, leading to a social geographic polarization. I have examined how the shift towards neoliberalism has affected a city on the fringe as Kalmar. How is the postindustrial urban space constructed? I found this important to analyze since it put two important questions in the light: For whom, and for which purpose do we build the city today? My questions have been:v  What are Kalmar municipality?s strategies to develop Kalmar?v  What are the results of this strategy in the urban space?v  What are the consequences of this strategy?The research has been a case study of the city of Kalmar with a qualitative deductive approach where David Harvey?s theories about the city in a capitalist system have been the underpinning structure.

Social work is a profession where documentation about people?s behavior and life circumstances is common. In the beginning of the essay we ask ourselves, if these descriptions about people can be problematic? To explore this, we studied social documentation, from the past. We used a historical source because history can help usunderstand the social work that is being conducted today.

As a result of increased energy prices more and more energy-efficient homes are coveted. An energy-efficient alternative is passive houses, which is characterized by an extremely well insulated building envelope that recovers the heat without the use of radiators or under floor heating. But a passive house requires a higher investment cost than a conventional building project, since it will require more construction materials, training of construction workers, greater land area, and long construction period. But the lower operating cost expects to pay back the higher cost of investment. We therefore question how profitable a passive house is in relation to houses built according to modern conventional building techniques.The aim of our study is to investigate the viability of passive houses compared to convent­ional houses.

The housing sector uses 40 % of the energy in Sweden and half of the electricity usage. Theuse of energy is the main reason to the increasing rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.This is the main motive but also a wish of higher safety, that is a higher rate of selfsufficientenergy production in Sweden, we want to decrease the need of using fossil fuel. Now whenthe energy price rise, the interest in energy issues increase and more people discuss thepossibility of reducing the usage of fossil fuel. A change to renewable energy such as sun,wind and water is the only solution where we can get a sustainable development.One way to contribute to a better use of energy is to build in the principle of passive house.The house is being built with a thick and tight insulation. If you use a heat-exchanger withhigh degree of efficiency and a final heating battery on the ventilation system, the heat fromlamps, devices and the ones living in the house should be enough to fulfil the criteria ofliving.

We came in contact with the project "Grönplan Danderyd" that aims to create a green structure plan for a municipality of Stockholm called Danderyds kommun. Our thesis is a part of this project and makes it's contribution through the gathering and systematization of the knowledge of the functions of an urban green structure. It also makes a contribution through suggesting how this knowledge can be applied during the construction of an urban green structure plan. We found that "Stadens parker och natur", published by the Swedish National board of Housing, Building and Planning, was a recurrent source of information in the green structure plans that we studied. We saw a need of complementary additions and updates to the rather old report and found literature that adds the developments of the last decade. First of all we have chosen to make themes based on the functions of a green structure that were presented by 'Stadens parker och natur'. The themes we suggest that a greenplanning document manage are: Recreation, Pedagogies and Heath, Biological Diversity, Green structure in the History of Building Cities, Cultural Identity, the Health of the City, Biological Technology in the Municipality and Use and the Users. We found good examples of how to handle these themes in documents that handle greenstructure planning from the municipalities of Göteborg, Strängnäs, Eskilstuna, Malmö, Lund, Västerås and Uppsala.

Stronger demand has been put on forestry to show environmental considerations during harvesting. This is especially for crossings of brooks with sensitive elements and great care should be observed when they are to be crossed during harvesting by logging machines. For that reason Hultdins has constructed a portable bridge that can be used for those occasions. The bridge has been developed in accordance with wishes from SCA forest, since they have a great deal of brooks in their forests and in private forests from where they buy part of their wood supply. The aim for this report is to investigate if this portable bridge can be of interest for the forestry market. The research has been made at SCA skog in Medelpad and Norrskog in Medelpad.

Samhället har en lagstadgad skyldighet att anpassa allmänna områden så att dessa ska kunna vara tillgängliga för alla medborgare i kommunen. Ändå finns det många platser och lokaler där hinder i miljön försvårar tillgängligheten för rullstolsburna personer. Enligt tidigare forskningsrapporter så finns det stora problem i tillgängligheten i grundskolans lokaler. Detta i samband med de dokumenterade forskningsrön som finns angående hur aktivitet hos barn främjar god fysisk och psykisk hälsa gör det angeläget att undersöka hur tillgängligheten ser ut i grundskolans idrottslokaler. Att miljön i idrottslokalerna är fri från hinder är en förutsättning för att rullstolsburna elever ska kunna delta i ämnet "idrott och hälsa".

I Sveriges storstadsregioner har behovet av mer strategiskt utformade planer växt fram under senare år. I korthet beror detta på kommunens begränsande möjligheter att påverka bebyggelseutvecklingen. Samtidigt har kommunerna fortfarande ett ansvar för att bebyggelseutvecklingen leds mot en social, ekonomisk och ekologisk hållbarhet. Behovet av att koncentrera de kommunala insatserna har då ökat. Kommunens roll blir att tillhandahålla hållbara rumsliga ramar där förändringar på kvartersnivå sker i privat regi. Syftet med mitt examensarbete har varit att utforma en strukturplan för Högsbo industriområde.

The aim of our study is to explore the empowerment process among micro-business owners in Kayamandi, a black township of Stellenbosch in South Africa. What are the positive and negative implications for the empowerment process? Another aim is to find out the role of local and international support in this process. The theoretical framework of this study revolves around the concepts of gender, power and empowerment. Our methods are qualitative interviews and observations.

Farmers Cooperative has in recent years developed from national markets to cross-border, international, collaborations. One example is the merger between the Swedish dairy company Arla and Danish MD Foods, where the companies collectively are sought to reduce transaction costs and thus improve efficiency. The Swedish market for commodities (fertilizers and pesticides) in agriculture has for many years been dominated by a few large players, with little opportunity for grain associations and local grain companies to offer their customers a varied range of commodities with a competitive pricing.To change this state, a majority of Swedish and Danish grain associations and local grain companies have established a trans-national cooperation. Through the establishment of the organization DLA Agro, they offer their customers a good variety of products with competitive prices. This study investigates thus according to the theory of cooperative models to what extent and how the DLA Agro helps to create benefits for the Swedish member companies.

Detta har varit ett examensarbete om 20 poäng på programmet för Fysisk Planering vid Blekinge Tekniska Högskola. Det har varit ett enskild arbete och handledning har kommit från två handledare på Blekinge Tekniska Högskola. Mittseminarium för arbetet hölls 29 januari 2004 på Blekinge Tekniska Högskola i närvaro av handledaren, opponenten och andra åhörare. Ett avsnitt berättar kort historik om Mörbylångas framväxt, om ortens hamn och om sockerbruket som fanns på orten 1908-1991. Det avsnittet är tänkt för att introducera läsaren i Mörbylånga och i det aktuella planområdet. Åldersbestämningen som finns på befintliga byggnader är endast ungefärlig, då de exakta årtalen har varit synnerligen svåra att få tag på. Nulägesbeskrivningen består i kartor som visar hur Mörbylånga försörjs trafikmässigt via ett större omland.

Participation, public art and participatory public art as phenomenons and subjects have been studied and discussed. With interviews and observations as a base, we have studied projects and discussed participation, effect and quality in relation to these. Furthermore we have looked at how the participatory art processes work in Sweden and England. This essay seeks to discuss the process of participatory public art and to emphasize the elements contributing to the quality of this process. It is up to us as planners to recognize the possibilities for a qualitative place. To mediate between different interests, for example between politicians and stakeholders, between economics and quality, between the place and its users, between individuals and the community, and in our case between artists, users and the municipality. Public art has gone from being about the product, an art piece, to becoming more of a process, from non interactive to interactive. Participation ranges from receiving information to play an active part in the process. Four cases have been studied, taken both from Sweden and England, showing the diversity of processes connected to Participatory Public Art. From interviews conducted in Sweden and England information and thoughts have been received and they show a higher degree of use of participatory public art in England, and also a higher consciousness.