The furniture industry is a thriving industry in the past decades all over the world. The increase in production and sales of furniture products means that more raw materials are needed and more furniture waste is produced at the same time. Taking into account the unsolved environmental issues, it is necessary to make innovation changes to reduce the waste and overcome the continuously increasing resource consumption. Circular economy draws a wide attention under this situation. As an alternative to replace the traditional linear consumption model, it balances the economic development and environmental concern. Turning waste into a new resource is a profitable opportunity for the furniture industry. However, product recovery in this industry meets obstacles due to the character of the furniture.This study considers discarded bulky furniture products. It focuses on the first step of furniture waste recovery: the collection process. The aim of this research is improving the efficiency of a “many to one” collection process in a reverse logistics system and increasing the recovery level within the hierarchy of options for discarded furniture. By using the soft system methodology, this study explores the current discarded furniture collection situation within Europe and then analyzes each essential element of this collection system. After that, combining with the relevant circular economy theory and information gathered from a case furniture company, we design a new conceptual business process model for discarded furniture collection.In the newly designed model, the collection process is carried out by the individual transport option with sufficient capacity from customer’s home to the furniture store. The new model is based on a collaborative lifestyle information platform. By managing the real-time information, the platform aligns individuals’ transport resources with discarded furniture demand to reduce the transport cost of the collection process. This model aims for optimal use of the available individual resources to complement the transport process. Moreover, this information platform helps to collect information in the early stage to reduce the uncertainty of reverse logistics.

A large amount of pharmaceuticals are discarded by the public every year and a lot are flushed down the drain or disposed of in household garbage. This leads to negative effects on the environment, animals and humans. The negative effects on the environment are also the result of the pharmaceutical substances that are flushed out in manufacturing. The purpose of the study is to investigate how product designers can improve the handling of pharmaceutcals at an individual level in order to reduce the amount of disarded pharmaceuticals in the long run. The aim is also to investigate how product designers can create a more sustainable consumer society. The study focuses on pharmaceutical consumers’ relation to pharmaceuticals and what their behavior regarding purchasing, use and disposal looks like. The main target group is people with pharmaceutical prescription and the secondary target group are people who buys pharmaceuticals occasionally. By using theories about sustainable behaviour and methods in Design for Sustainable Behaviour, the aim is to understand why the individual’s pharmaceutical consumption is like this and how to make a positive change in the behaviour.    The methods used are user studies and workshop, tehese are followed by function analysis, idea generation and concept development to develop a design proposal.  It became clear during the course of the study that the problem is based on ignorance of the effects of pharmaceuticals and that it is important to shed light on what resources are required to research and produce prharmaceuticals. The final design proposal is an information station that informs pharmaceutical consumers about how their actions affect human health and the environment, to make them think about their use of pharmaceuticals. The design proposal also gives pharmaceutical consumers the opportunity to choose their actions by providing them with information that makes it easier to make more sustainable decisions. / En stor mängd läkemedel kasseras varje år av allmänheten, mycket spolas även ut i avlopp eller slängs i hushållssoporna vilket leder till negativa effekter på miljö, djur och människor. De negativa effekterna på miljön är även resultatet av de läkemedelssubstanser som spolas ut i samband med tillverkning. Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur man som produktdesigner kan förbättra hanteringen av läkemedel på individnivå för att på sikt minska mängden kasserade läkemedel. Syftet är även att undersöka hur produktdesigners kan arbeta för att skapa ett mer hållbart konsumtionssamhälle. Studien fokuserar på läkemedelskonsumenters förhållande till läkemedel samt hur deras beteende kring inköp, användning och kassering ser ut. Den huvudsakliga målgruppen är personer med receptbelagda läkemedel och den sekundära målgruppen är personer som köper läkemedel ibland.   Med hjälp av teorier kring hållbart beteende och metoder inom Design för Hållbara Beteenden är målet att förstå varför individens läkemedelskonsumtion ser ut som den gör samt hur man kan arbeta för att skapa en positiv beteendeförändring.  Metoderna som används är användarstudie och workshop, dessa följs upp med funktionsanalys, idégenerering och konceptutveckling för att få fram ett designförslag.  Det framkom under studiens gång att problematiken grundar sig i okunskap kring läkemedels effekter samt att det är viktigt att belysa vilka resurser som krävs för att forska fram och producera läkemedel. Det slutliga designförslaget är en informationsstation som upplyser läkemedelskonsumenter om hur deras handlingar påverkar humanhälsan och miljön för att få dem att tänka efter kring sin läkemedelsanvändning. Med designförslaget ges läkemedelskonsumenter även möjligheten att välja sina handlingar genom att förse dem med information som gör det enklare att ta mer hållbara beslut.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis offers a focused examination of thematically-related story-chapters that Ray Bradbury originally intended for his first novel concept—Summer Morning, Summer Night, a book set in the vivid memories of his own small-town Midwest childhood. The stories at the heart of this thesis were discarded from the project (often referred to by Bradbury as the “Illinois novel”) by the time that he published a portion of the original project as Dandelion Wine in 1957. As that novelized story cycle is perhaps the best-known of all Bradbury’s “Green Town” books, I intend to use it as a springboard for identifying and examining those stories that were discarded, left unfinished, or eventually published as stand-alone tales in other outlets. Since all of these stories were eliminated before Dandelion Wine emerged as the first published portion of the larger Illinois novel, I will further explore how their hypothetical presence or actual absence may have affected Dandelion Wine as a whole, from inception and development to publication and popular reception, as well as investigate what these tales may reveal about the evolution of Bradbury as a writer.