Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues have been received much attention in businessand management practises globally. Jensen & Yeh (2009, 3) state that ?The agenda ofCorporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a factor in the process of globalization,and Chinese companies may sometimes feel pushed into this agenda without a clearunderstanding of the rationale behind it?. China?s textile and apparel industry, amanufacturing-based economy with its products bounding up with the consumers worldwide,has been facing enormous pressure to take CSR initiatives, particularly in relation toenvironmental issues and labor standards.

The Swedish National Rail Administration has changed in the past decade, from its origin after a less dramatic separation from the Swedish State Railways to becoming an authority with its own identity. Today the National Rail Administration is a large organisation with several different departments, each with its own unique function. To operate train services the railway needs to be ?in shape?, leading to a need for maintenance, reInvestments and new Investments. For this purpose, the National Rail Administration carries out public procurement where contractors, who are able to perform maintenance and new construction, submit tenders.

Problembakgrund: idag finns ett hundratal etiska fonder där investerare kan välja att placera sina pengar och under de senaste åren har intresset för att investera ansvarsfullt ökat enormt. Det finns ingen formell definition av vad en etisk fond är, och därmed kan det vara svårt att skilja en etisk fond från en traditionell fond. Ett mått på hur väl företag jobbar med etik speglas i deras ESG-betyg. ESG står för Environmental, Social och Governance och används för att bestämma hur hållbara och ansvarstagande företag är. Det faktum att det inte finns någon formell definition av vad en etisk fond innebär, väcker funderingar kring ifall det finns en skillnad i ESG-betyg mellan etiska och traditionella Sverigefonder.Problemformulering: finns det någon skillnad i ESG-betyg gällande miljö och mänskliga rättigheter mellan traditionella Sverigefonder och etiska Sverigefonder?Syfte: studiens huvudsyfte är att undersöka huruvida det finns någon skillnad mellan etiska Sverigefonder och traditionella Sverigefonder gällande ESG-betyg.

The heating of companies premises is today functional with electrical heating and heating offossil fuel. The energy cost for these kinds of heating in buildings has heavily increased duringthe last years and the influence on the environment has become more visual. This leads to thatenterprises today become more anxious to render energy more effective and find alternativesolutions to their ancient heating systems. This is something that Skandinaviska kraftprodukterAB in Halmstad has become aware of.The purpose with this examination is to find the most cost-efficient and environmental measuresfor the office and workshop premises of SKP AB. Where one of the bigger things is to find agood alternative for their current oil furnace, which was heating the workshop.

In 2010, Airwatergreen AB started testing their new technology, the Airwaterwell, an atmospherical water generator of their own design that is running on solar heat, with a production capacity of three litres of water per day and m2. The purpose was to focus on foreign aid organizations as main purchasers for project Investments towards rural communities in developing countries that suffer from lack of, or compromised quality of drinking water. In order to further understand if this technology would bring a positive impact in the developing countries, the company contacted the Swedish University of Agriculture for a socio-economic study of the Airwaterwells? potential. The authors elected Cost benefit analysis as the appropriate method for conducting the study and India became the study region because of its many problems with water related issues such as diseases as well as insufficient water supply for households. The regions that this study is based on are Gujarat, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh given their differences in income, health situation and poverty rate.

Uppsatsen beskriver omfattningen av svenska skogsinvesteringar i Estland, Lettlandoch Litauen. Studien kartlägger även de största aktörerna, investeringsmotiv ochsignifikanta skillnader i skogliga förutsättningar i de olika länderna.Eftersom vi inte har funnit tidigare studier av svenska skogsinvesteringar i något avdessa länder, har studien baserats på officiell statistik och faktauppgifter,litteraturstudier, intervjuer, e-postkommunikation, samt information frånwebbplatser. Vi har även genomfört intervjuer i form av en enkät med utvaldaskogsägare.Resultat och analys innehåller en beskrivning av de skogliga parametrarna förrespektive land, en sammanställning av enkätsvar, samt uppgifter omskogsmarkspriser i Baltikum.Baserat på vår uppskattning omfattar de svenska skogsinvesteringarna i Baltikum ca300 000 ha, varav 150 - 200 000 ha i Lettland, ca 100 000 ha i Estland och ca 30 000ha i Litauen. Detta motsvarar ca 4 % av skogsarealen i Baltikum.Bland skogsbolagen är de största aktörerna Bergvik Skog, Södra Skogsägarna,Tornator och Skogssällskapet som totalt äger 115 000 ha. Bland investeringsfondernaär SPP & Storebrand och Europeiska Skogsfonden störst och blandprivatpersoner/företag är t.ex.

On today?s competitive market, it is difficult to achieve profitability trough high prices on manufactured products. Profitability must be obtained through low manufacturing costs, high quality and short lead times. One of the companies on the market is Sandvik Coromant, manufacturer of tools and chips for metal cutting. This master thesis investigates the methods of manufacturing for boring bars at the manufacturing unit GVH4 at Sandvik Coromant in Gimo, Sweden.

There have been significant changes in the agricultural sector during the past 20 years (Jordbruksverket, 2008). The development of today is towards deregulation and adaption to global market conditions. As farmers try to adapt to the changed and more competitive market conditions Investments are often necessary (LRF Konsult et al, 2012). Loans to agriculture and forestry businesses have increased to record levels and debt has doubled over the past years. The financial turbulence of the past years has contributed to an increase of the meaningfulness and willingness of the banks to be able to understand and handle risks associated with agriculture and forestry (Breiding, 2010).

The Baltic Sea is threatened by eutrophication that largely is due to nutrient leaching from farmland within the catchment area. To solve this problem the surrounding countries cooperate within various configurations such as HELCOM and the EU-financed project Baltic Compass. Poor manure management in Russia has been discussed frequently the last couple of years. A literature review of different types of reports and legal acts is the core of this degree project which has been performed in connection to two ongoing research projects financed by EU (Baltic Compass) and SIDA. It is supplemented with interviews with Swedish agricultural consultants and travel reports from two occasions when I had the opportunity to discuss with Russians active within the agricultural sector. Different hypotheses were investigated and discussed. The environmental debate in Russia is quiet and there is a widespread approach that economic profit always trumps environmental concern ? a Soviet heritage that influence the Russian agriculture considerably. The Russian legal acts on stable manure management focus mainly on sanitary questions and only secondary on nutrient leaching.

Biogas is a renewable energy source that is produced by anaerobic digestion of organic mate-rial. In Sweden, biogas predominately comes from sewage water sludge and landfills or from organic waste of households and industries. Small scale digestion plants at farms are espe-cially expected to contribute to increased biogas production in the future. Biogas can be ob-tained directly in it?s raw form and used as fuel in a combustion chamber.

The agricultural sector is characterized by larger crop farms and more extensive livestockproduction. The efficiency improvement is partly a result from a stronger competition in theglobal market. The agricultural products need to be produced at a lower cost than competitorsin order to survive as a farmer. The solution is larger firms that benefit from economies ofscale. This brings large Investments that create a greater need for leverage and closer relationto the credit agency.

Problem: Today Frigoscandia Equipment Europe, FSEE, is not sure how their CRM-system, MSMS, is used along with other solutions at the different regions throughout Europe. The company is interested in a usage evaluation describing by who and how the system is used. FSEE is also concerned about the users opinions of future development and improvements.Management is also concerned about how MSMS would support the After Market and gain full leverage of the IT Investments. MSMS is today only used to a limited extent in a few of the After Market departments, and FSEE is interested in what an overall usage would mean in terms of improved internal communication, customer focus and information management. The following questions will therefore be investigated in this study:· How, by whom and where is MSMS used within FSEE?s After Market and Sales divisions today?· What does the After Market division at FSEE gain from using MSMS?· What has to be done to improve the usage of MSMS at FSEE? Purpose: The purpose of this Master Thesis is partly to examine the current usage of the Sales and Marketing System within FSEE?s After Market and Sales divisions.

The sludgebark and to a certain extent the bark were until a decade ago waste products without any economic value that were thrown away. A number of environmental laws and increcing energy prices have improved the prerequisites for increasing the use of these materials. At Seskarö sawmill they burn the sludgebark and a great deal of the bark in the sawmill furnace. The sludgebark has a number of disadvantages compared to bark during burning. The sludgebark is often wet which means the energy net from burning often gets low.

This study concerns the energy future of the county of Stockholm up until 2050 and describes how the energy consumption can be compared to today with the use of scenario methodology. Within energy future studies the backcasting approach is well known and has been put to use in this study. Due to the characteristics of backcasting the study is self-fulfilling, i.e. the future energy scenarios presented in this study satisfy the targets set up in this study. In the light of what may be the largest challenge of our time ? the climate change - the aim of this study is to describe how the energy consumption in a fossil fuel free Stockholm county in the year of 2050 may be.

The access to good sanitary facilities is an important factor that elevates the experienced living standard as it improves hygiene and reduces the transmission of deseases. The ratification of the millennium goals by 189 countries demonstrates that this is an important international issue. Together the countries have taken upon themselves that the proportion of the population that lacked access to sustainable safe drinking water and sanitary facilities in the year 2000 will have been reduced by half by the year 2015. In Peru, the construction of sewage pipe networks to transport the sewage out of the direct human environment is progressing. The safety and sustainability of these systems can be questioned, since in Peru the sewage seldom receive any treatment before being emitted to a recipient. This is taking place in Picota and sorrunding villages as well. In the last 25 years several systems implementing small-scale onsite treatment have been introduced throughout Latin America in an attempt to give more people access to sustainable and safe sanitary facilities, reducing water consumption and taking advantage of the agricultural values of the sewage fractions while protecting the environment from its negative impact. In this study three different sanitary systems and the effects of different population growths were compared.