Professional Info

 

Duncan is the founding director of Ecodyn.  He is a qualified ESOS Lead Assessor, a Chartered Environmentalist and a Fellow of IEMA.  For several years now, Duncan has been primarily involved in renewable energy products, from multi-megawatt community wind farms down to individual small-scale wind turbine installations.  As well as experience in wind turbine installations, site survey, planning, EIA, finance, project management, etc., Duncan is also still involved in the company's traditional services, such as sustainable construction.

 

A quick review of our archives shows that Duncan has personally completed over 400 projects directly for EEBPP, ETBPP, Action Energy, Design Advice, Carbon Trust, Envirowise and similar initiatives.  

 

 

SOME NOTABLE PROJECTS

 

Waste Minimisation – carried out process efficiency / waste minimisation audits for several hundred companies, mainly in manufacturing industry, both directly and on behalf of organisations such as Envirowise and Scottish Enterprise.  Savings identified in diverse areas including process efficiency, utilities (water supply, effluent, energy systems), waste generation, segregation and disposal, and others.  Sectors covered include construction, engineering, design, chemical, food and drink, fish, textiles, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, medical, waste, public, hospitality, agriculture, electronics, aerospace, defence, space, education and others. 

 

Green Design – carried out green design review projects for manufacturing companies to ensure compliance with WEEE, ELV, EuP and packaging directives.  Clients are confidential but include representatives of the pharmaceuticals, electronics and distribution sectors.  Also developed and delivered various training days and dismantling workshops delivered across the UK, principally for or in collaboration with Envirowise.

 

Environmental Audit – carried out legislative compliance and risk assessment audits for a wide range of companies.  Projects include an assessment of historical and current processes on site against current and forthcoming legislation, provision of a compliance report and risk assessment, together with action plans for improvement.  Sectors covered include pretty much everything apart from nuclear installations.

 

Green Design Labelling - working with Envirowise, AMDEA and Home Retail Group to develop a design-stage green design label for use in proposed Argos “Green Pages”.  Research into design, manufacture, use and disposal of EEE product classes, development of a weighted label assessment protocol.

 

HIE Carbon Management Workshops – development and delivery of a programme of interactive workshops for SMEs in the food sector across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.  As the cost of climate change starts to bite, it is these peripheral areas with their dependence on transport links and high unit energy costs that will be affected first.  These workshops provided delegates with an introduction to carbon footprinting and ways of reducing the carbon intensity of product supply chains.

 

SFDF Parliamentary Reception - the Scottish Food and Drink Federation asked us to identify what would be the next big thing to hit their sector; we researched the industry and concluded that the climate change agenda (both fuel costs and carbon taxation) was the single biggest threat.  This Parliamentary Reception included development of typical supply chain carbon footprints for member companies and training for company directors in supply chain carbon management.

 

GCFG Welsh Country Foods - development of a comprehensive supply chain carbon footprint for the main lamb processing facility in Wales in response to the Saunders, Barber, Taylor paper.  This was particularly useful when ASDA, the site’s main customer, announced to the press a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 10% by all their primary suppliers; we were able to point out that the site itself was only responsible for 7% of the total footprint.

 

Solway Recycling – a typical carbon footprinting project; this company collects silage wrap and other plastic farm wastes from across the UK for reprocessing into various extruded products.  They wanted to be able to answer the question often asked of them, whether this was environmentally preferable to incineration on site.  We developed a comparative carbon footprint of their products and those of their competitors, which successfully demonstrated that their business model was the better environmental option.

 

Tourism Innovation Group - research into the carbon footprint of Scottish tourism and development of a robust off-setting scheme, based both on EUETS/JI/CDM projects and smaller scale, Scottish-based VER projects.

 

Sustainability Benchmarking – research for Highlands and Islands Enterprise into the indicators used by various comparable agencies.  This project has developed into the creation of a weighted index of sustainability, based on regional and operational criteria, which is used for the assessment of strategic projects and will in time be used for ongoing monitoring of agency performance across the board.

 

Scottish Food Sector Survey - Co-ordinated and assisted with a project to analyse and survey the entire Scottish food sector.  This included research into the structure of the sector, development of a representative survey and questionnaire model, delivery of survey, analysis and collation of results, commentary and recommendations.  The survey was commissioned by Envirowise in association with the Scottish Food Group.

 

Environmental critique of HIE Transport Policy -  Highlands and Islands Enterprise is the economic development agency responsible for the north of Scotland.  With the changes to delivery of Transport services inherent in the launch of Transport Scotland, HIE developed a Transport Strategy for the region, based on economic and social requirements, on which they then asked for environmental comments.  Since the Strategy had not been formulated with any environmental issues in mind, some of the comments were quite colourful and their resolution interesting.

 

Environmental Management Systems – EMS (and IMS) development to EMAS and/or ISO14001 accreditation, also including development of quality management systems to ISO9001 and Health & Safety management systems to OHSAS18001.  Clients include Highland Spring, Superglass, WCF Potatoes, DS Smith PLC, Grampian Country Food Group, APW, Bosch Rexroth, Gleneagles Springwater, IMD Solutions, Invotec.  Projects included assessment of environmental impacts, development of system structures, training and auditing.

 

Strategic Environmental Assessments  - carried out SEA on Operating Plan (2007-13) for ERDF funding in Highlands & Islands, Operating Plan (2007-10) for Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Operating Plan (2007-13) for ERDF funding in the north-west of England for Government Office North West.  Training in SEA for Western Isles, Angus and Dundee City Councils, Cairngorm National Park Authority and others.

 

Sustainable Construction – various projects, ranging from a basic EcoHomes assessment for a single house to an ongoing project acting as sustainability consultant for the regeneration of Craigmillar, involving some 3,500 houses, leisure, healthcare, commercial and retail facilities.

 

PPC Applications – completed applications for Part A, A(1) and B installations in various sectors for facilities in SEPA and EA regions, e.g TEG Environmental Plc, Grampian Country Food Group, Gates Power Transmission and others.  Projects included assessment and management of raw materials, chemicals, processing, waste, effluent, atmospheric emissions, energy systems, packaging, distribution etc.

 

Contaminated Land – management of contaminated land site investigations at various levels from desk study through to remediation strategy.

 

Quality Meat Scotland / Hybu Cig Cymru – multi-stage project that has seen the majority of the abattoirs in Scotland and Wales being supported through PPC application process.  The process is now being repeated for the intensive agriculture sector in Scotland.  

 

Creed – A comprehensive review of waste generation and management across the Western Isles for Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, resulting in recommendations for improvement of the integrated waste management facility at the Creed.