Eunomia expands resource efficiency team with five new appointments
Environmental consultancy firm Eunomia Research & Consulting is expanding its ranks, with five new consultants joining the UK team across its Bristol, London and Glasgow offices.
Eunomia is one of the UK’s foremost advisors on a range of environmental projects for public and private clients, with a focus on waste and recycling, resource efficiency and the circular economy, as well as renewable energy and marine planning. The company has over 70 employees in the UK, with offices also in Brussels, Copenhagen, Auckland and New York.
New senior consultant in resource efficiency Duncan Oswald joins Eunomia in Scotland from Ecodyn Ltd, a consultancy he founded in 2000. Oswald has 25 years’ experience in environmental auditing and consultancy, across a variety of sectors and for public and private clients such as the Carbon Trust, Highland Spring, DS Smith and local and national Scottish governments.
Mark Hilton, Eunomia’s Head of Resource Efficiency, said: “We’re delighted to have Duncan’s extensive and very practical resource efficiency and energy experience on board to help our clients globally, and of course in Scotland, which is demonstrating real leadership in resource efficiency and circular economy.”
Along with Oswald, Eunomia also announced the addition of four other new staff members, including a senior project manager and two graduate trainees. Hilton commented on the importance of the company’s services in today’s political and environmental climate, saying: “We are witnessing growing demand for consultancy advice at a time when forward-thinking businesses and governments prepare to transition towards a low-carbon, resource efficient future.”
No let up
2017 was a big year for Eunomia and this looks set to continue in 2018, with a number of heavyweight studies released and momentum growing around the idea of deposit return schemes (DRS) for plastic bottles, about which the firm has conducted numerous studies, including for Zero Waste Scotland (another of Oswald’s previous clients).
In September last year, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon committed her government to introducing a DRS at some point during 2018, and there has been increasing support for a scheme in the rest of the UK from retailers and environmental campaign groups, as well as Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee, leading Environment Secretary Michael Gove to announce in October a call for evidence on the feasibility of an English DRS.
Eunomia has also been looking into the issues surrounding incineration in the UK, another current hot topic. Its latest Residual Waste Infrastructure Review (RWIR), released in August 2017, claimed that expansion of residual waste treatment capacity could put a ceiling of 63 per cent on the UK’s recycling rate, with recyclate being diverted into residual waste treatment facilities to make up for a shortfall in residual waste, a conclusion that was hastily rebuffed by many of the waste management big hitters.
More recently, the consultancy firm has drawn up a new metric for reporting recycling rates across the world, creating a revised league table accounting for variations in countries’ methodologies which knocks Germany’s reported figure of 66 per cent recycling down by 10 percentage points. Eunomia’s research on this topic, which began in association with Resource in March 2017, has been pertinent in relation to the EU Circular Economy Package, a set of laws and actions designed to make Europe more resource efficient. The issue of how to best measure recycling was a sticking point in discussions between member states, who only reached a compromise on the matter in December.
