Food waste from grocery stores - An analysis of municipal management inSweden and a detailed study of the situation in Umeå municipalityThe objective of this thesis was to analyze the municipal management of food waste fromgrocery stores in Sweden in general and in Umeå municipality in particular. Furthermore theobjective was to account for the different waste treatment methods that can be used and toevaluate them from an environmental perspective. In order to analyze the municipalmanagement a survey was sent to all of the municipalities/municipal waste companies inSweden. A general comparison of treatment methods was carried out on the basis of ascientific review and a system analysis was performed in order to compare three differenttreatment alternatives for the food waste generated in grocery stores in Umeå. The surveyshowed that the legal definition of food waste from grocery stores is unclear and variesbetween municipalities.

The government regulations for energy use in buildings will be tightened in the future. At the same time the interest in environmental classifications and certifications of buildings is increasing. This has meant a new situation for solar energy. The designs of solar heating systems are often based on experience and/or rules of thumb, rather than calculations and simulations. This thesis examines whether simulation tools, in this case Polysun, are useful in this work.

Questions concerning the Cultural Heritage must be integrated in social planning.Therefore there is a need for adequate methods for cultural environmental analysis, toreceive knowledge that is relevant in an integrated conservation. The thesis is a review ofmethods for cultural environmental analysis and discusses the qualifications necessary fora method in order to receive adequate information as well as it discusses what kind ofinformation to be considered relevant. The thesis also analyzes a specific method forcultural environmental analysis in order to exam if it has got the qualifications concludedas necessary if it is to be used in an integrated conservation. The conclusion is that amethod for cultural environmental analysis should collect information about the entireenvironment (integrated information about nature and culture, in a historical perspectiveand how it is today), about social structures, physical remains (buildings etc) and what thecollected information tell about the history of the studied area, as well as what is importantin the landscape of today. Information about how the environment should be treated in thefuture is also of importance.

?Ecosystem services are the ecosystems direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human well-being.? In order to reach the generation target and the environmental objectives it is important to increase the awareness of biodiversity and ecosystem services and it?s importance to human welfare and simultaneously highlighting the value of ecosystem services. The value of ecosystem services should be integrated into economic standpoints, political considerations and other decisions in the society. In today?s society there is a problem concerning that the value of ecosystem services are not considered in economic terms, which can result in solutions that are unfavorable for our welfare (Ministry of Environment, 2012).

Smallholder farmers in low-income countries face a number of challenges in animal production. Animal husbandry carries great potential in reducing poverty, hunger and gender inequality, but at the same time infectious diseases are prominent threats to farmers? livelihoods and their animals. The objective of this study was to investigate the socioeconomic impact of infectious animal diseases on smallholder farmers in low-income countries, using African swine fever (ASF) in Uganda as an example. The study was conducted in two parts. The first part of the study was questionnaire-based and performed in Gulu district, northern Uganda.

Material handling is a term that includes all kinds of handling of material from a raw product to a finished one. ABB is active in the following segments; foundry, packaging and palletizing, metal industry and plastics industry.The demands for efficiency and reliability have been set very high in the industrial sector. Optimizing of the material handling will give the company higher cost-effectiveness. Around the robot there are different kinds of material flows, to optimize the cycle time, consisting of carriages combined in different ways.Motion Control is a complex system with main functions such as; positioning, synchronizing, indexing and more. The products in the system need to cooperate to make these functions possible therefore integration of motor- and servo products are important.

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.

This study is based on an ongoing debate regarding the Stockholm Stock Exchange, which centers around the possible abolition of quarterly reports. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this debate by examining how the relationship between financial reports and stock price correlates. The study's methodological approach is based on the Capital Market Research frame-work in which an ERC model and an extended model are used to measure the relationship. Three hypotheses were formed to categorize the direction of the study, these categorizations treats the differences in impact between quarterly and annual reports on stock price, as well as differences in impact as a casual effect of company size and seasonal sensitivity. The results of the study show that quarterly reports have a stronger impact on the share price than annual reports.

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..

Sustainability questions that concern the subjects of environmental and social aspects are increasing in today?s society, and therefore the sustainability report is a way for companies to show their work with sustainability development by working with a clear report and follow up. As the first country in the world, Sweden has decided, as from the financial year of 2008, that all governmental owned companies should present a sustainability report according to the guidelines of GRI. The aim of this essay was to identify and analyze actual events from a sustainability aspect for Vattenfall, from a medial perspective during the time period 2005-2009. We made a content analysis of one company?s sustainability reports during a time period of five years and we connected this to the medias reports of the company from the same period, to see if there were any connections between the subjects that media had elucidated.

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.

In the last years people has become more aware of issues regarding corporate social responsibility. This has led to a more thorough control of big multinational companies, which are often held account of violating social, ethical and environmental values. The term most often used for this is corporate social responsibility (CSR). H&M is a Swedish multinational company and the concept of H&M is fashion to a low price. The material most often used in producing clothes is cotton.

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 incineration of waste is steadily increasing in Sweden and so is the production of ashes. The bottom ash has for many years been used as construction material in landfills. Now many of the nation's landfills are closed and there is a great need to find another beneficial use for the ash. Bottom ash is a gravel-like material and with its material properties it can replace natural gravel in parts of roads and surface constructions. Today this use is only approved within landfill areas where leachate is collected and checked.