With the increased attention of different stakeholders on the environmental performance of businesses, several firms are increasingly focusing on product recovery and reuse activities which are not only profitable but may also help to reduce the environmental impact of their operations. This dissertation focuses on managerial challenges associated with such value-added recovery and reuse activities. The first essay examines how a firm should bring a product to market, in particular, whether to lease or sell products. Motivated by claims that leasing can be an environmentally superior to selling, we analytically investigate if either leasing or selling can be both more profitable for a monopolist and have a lower total environmental impact. The second essay first experimentally examines the effect of remanufactured products on the perceived value of new products. This effect is then incorporated to analytically investigate an OEM's strategy in the presence of competition from third-party remanufacturers. In the third essay, motivated by a major IT company, we investigate the optimal product recovery and remanufacturing strategy for a firm that can offer trade-in rebates to achieve price discrimination. We also consider the effect of potential entry of third-party remanufacturers on the firm's recovery and remanufacturing strategy.

Commercial aviation has become an integral part of modern society and enables unprecedented global connectivity by increasing rapid business, cultural, and personal connectivity. In the decades following World War II, passenger travel through commercial aviation quickly grew at a rate of roughly 8% per year globally. The FAA's most recent Terminal Area Forecast predicts growth to continue at a rate of 2.5% domestically, and the market outlooks produced by Airbus and Boeing generally predict growth to continue at a rate of 5% per year globally over the next several decades, which translates into a need for up to 30,000 new aircraft produced by 2025. With such large numbers of new aircraft potentially entering service, any negative consequences of commercial aviation must undergo examination and mitigation by governing bodies so that growth may still be achieved. Options to simultaneously grow while reducing environmental impact include evolution of the commercial fleet through changes in operations, aircraft mix, and technology adoption. Methods to rapidly evaluate fleet environmental metrics are needed to enable decision makers to quickly compare the impact of different scenarios and weigh the impact of multiple policy options. As the fleet evolves, interdependencies may emerge in the form of tradeoffs between improvements in different environmental metrics as new technologies are brought into service. In order to include the impacts of these interdependencies on fleet evolution, physics-based modeling is required at the appropriate level of fidelity. Evaluation of environmental metrics in a physics-based manner can be done at the individual aircraft level, but will then not capture aggregate fleet metrics. Contrastingly, evaluation of environmental metrics at the fleet level is already being done for aircraft in the commercial fleet, but current tools and approaches require enhancement because they currently capture technology implementation through post-processing, which does not capture physical interdependencies that may arise at the aircraft-level. The goal of the work that has been conducted here was the development of a methodology to develop surrogate fleet approaches that leverage the capability of physics-based aircraft models and the development of connectivity to fleet-level analysis tools to enable rapid evaluation of fuel burn and emissions metrics. Instead of requiring development of an individual physics-based model for each vehicle in the fleet, the surrogate fleet approaches seek to reduce the number of such models needed while still accurately capturing performance of the fleet. By reducing the number of models, both development time and execution time to generate fleet-level results may also be reduced. The initial steps leading to surrogate fleet formulation were a characterization of the commercial fleet into groups based on capability followed by the selection of a reference vehicle model and a reference set of operations for each group. Next, three potential surrogate fleet approaches were formulated. These approaches include the parametric correction factor approach, in which the results of a reference vehicle model are corrected to match the aggregate results of each group; the average replacement approach, in which a new vehicle model is developed to generate aggregate results of each group, and the best-in-class replacement approach, in which results for a reference vehicle are simply substituted for the entire group. Once candidate surrogate fleet approaches were developed, they were each applied to and evaluated over the set of reference operations. Then each approach was evaluated for their ability to model variations in operations. Finally, the ability of each surrogate fleet approach to capture implementation of different technology suites along with corresponding interdependencies between fuel burn and emissions was evaluated using the concept of a virtual fleet to simulate the technology response of multiple aircraft families. The results of experimentation led to a down selection to the best approach to use to rapidly characterize the performance of the commercial fleet for accurately in the context of acceptability of current fleet evaluation methods. The parametric correction factor and average replacement approaches were shown to be successful in capturing reference fleet results as well as fleet performance with variations in operations. The best-in-class replacement approach was shown to be unacceptable as a model for the larger fleet in each of the scenarios tested. Finally, the average replacement approach was the only one that was successful in capturing the impact of technologies on a larger fleet. These results are meaningful because they show that it is possible to calculate the fuel burn and emissions of a larger fleet with a reduced number of physics-based models within acceptable bounds of accuracy. At the same time, the physics-based modeling also provides the ability to evaluate the impact of technologies on fleet-level fuel burn and emissions metrics. The value of such a capability is that multiple future fleet scenarios involving changes in both aircraft operations and technology levels may now be rapidly evaluated to inform and equip policy makers of the implications of impacts of changes on fleet-level metrics.

<p>After decades of investigation, we still have to deal withthe problem of environmental effects of the use of de-icingsalt on roads. Lacking useful indicators of the system, westill do not know the environmental utility of ameliorativemeasures taken. The thesis aims at</p><p>i) describing the system of de-icing practices and theirenvironmental effects with special reference to the exposure ofthe roadside environment to air-borne salt and damage to Norwayspruce seedlings and ii) at proposing indicators for afollow-up system. By collecting bulk deposition and relatingthe deposition pattern to factors concerning wind androad-maintenance characteristics, the influence of thesefactors on air-borne exposure is investigated. By exposingNorway spruce (<i>Picea abies</i>(L.) Karst.) seedlings to roadsideconditions the influence ofsalt exposure on the degree ofdamage is investigated. Based on a comparison of severalsystems of monitoring, improvements are suggested by proposingnew indicators for salt use and its environmental effects.</p><p>A large part of the salt that is applied on the road surfacewill be transported by air and deposited on the ground in theroadside. While the vast majority of the salt will be depositedwithin some tens of metres of the road, some may still be windtransported several hundred metres away. The wind directionplays an important role for the deposition already at adistance of some ten metres from the road. Wind speedinfluences the distance to which the salt is transported.Chloride concentration in unwashed needles collected after thesalting season is positively related to the bulk deposition ofCl during the exposure. The degree of damage can be describedby a sigmoid curve of response to the Cl concentration inneedles. Improvements to the follow-up system are suggested byproposing indicators of the driving forces, pressures, states,impacts and possible responses as regards the undesired impactson water resources, vegetation and the roadside scenery as asocietal asset.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>road, de-icing salt, air-borne, environmentalimpact, vegetation damage, Norway spruce, seedling, follow-up,monitoring, indicator</p>

<p>There are several incentives for using bottom ash from municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI bottom ash) as a construction material, such as for road construction. These incentives include decreased disposal of material on landfills and a reduced amount of raw material extracted for road building purposes. However, one of the main obstacles to utilising the material is uncertainties regarding its environmental properties. The overall objective of this thesis is to describe the potential environmental impacts of utilising MSWI bottom ash in constructions and to improve the tools for environmental assessments.</p><p>An environmental systems analysis (ESA) approach based on a life cycle perspective was outlined and used in a case study, with the aim of describing the differences in resource use and emissions that can be expected if crushed rock in the sub-base of a road in the Stockholm region in Sweden were to be substituted by MSWI bottom ash. The whole life cycle of the road was taken into account and the alternative disposal of the bottom ash was included. It was found that the studied alternatives would cause different types of potential environmental impact; whereas the conventional alternative with only crushed rock in the road’s sub-base would lead to larger use of energy and natural resources, the alternative with MSWI bottom ash in the sub-base would lead to larger contaminant leaching. It was concluded that a life cycle approach is needed in order to include both resource use and emissions in the comparison between the two alternative scenarios. The leaching of metals turned out to be the most important environmental aspect for the comparison and in particular the difference in copper (Cu) leaching was shown to be large.</p><p>However, a large amount of Cu may not pose an environmental threat if the Cu is strongly bound to dissolved organic carbon (DOC). In order to improve the basis for toxicity estimates and environmental risk assessments, and thereby provide better input values for ESAs, the speciation of Cu to DOC in MSWI bottom ash leachate was studied. It was found that Cu to a large extent was bound to DOC, which is consistent with previous research. The results also suggest that the hydrophilic fraction of the MSWI bottom ash DOC is important for Cu complexation and that the pH-dependence for Cu complexation to MSWI bottom ash DOC is smaller than for natural DOC. This implies that models calibrated for natural DOC may give inconsistent simulations of Cu-DOC complexation in MSWI bottom ash leachate.</p>

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 95 p. : ill., maps (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-95).

Heidelberg, Universität, Thesis (doctoral), 2001.

Thesis (M.L. Arch.)--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-105).

The purpose of this work is to evaluate how a docking station can be more future proof, environmentally friendly and satisfy the customers’ needs more. The docking station in focus of this project is owned by LVI, and used with one of their cameras MagniLink S. When comparing the results of the new docking station and the current docking station, the new docking station is more future proof, environmentally friendly and satisfies the customers’ needs more. In the end it is established that following steps should be followed during the development of a docking station: -          Make sure that the cables are reliably fastened into the docking station and that the connectors can handle the docking force. -          Design to use more material with lower environmental impact and ensure that the material fulfils the product requirements and objectives. Use as small amount of material as possible. -          Prioritize the customers’ expressed and unexpressed needs as one of the highest priorities during the development process.

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration