Jamie O'Hare

Position: Consultant

Jamie O'Hare is a Consultant in ENVIRON's WEEE, RoHS and Eco-design practice and graduated from the University of Bath with a Masters in Mechanical Engineering.

Contact the Compliance & EcoDesign team

Jamie has extensive experience in assisting companies to comply with the WEEE and RoHS Directives as practical experience in wider Eco-Design issues.

Jamie is currently undertaking a PhD research project at the University of Bath Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre in collaboration with ENVIRON, on 'Eco-Design, Eco-Innovation and future moves towards Corporate Sustainability'. The aim of the research is to encourage companies to move from small incremental eco-design improvements to radical 'step change' reductions in the environmental impact of their products and services through the use of 'Eco-Innovation' design tools.

Jamie's first paper entitled Today's moves towards eco-innovation in the medical electronics sector looks at the drivers for EcoDesign and eco-innovation within this industry. The paper, which highlights current and future environmental legislation, sustainable procurement and competition-driven innovation as the major drivers for eco-design, was presented at the Sustainable Innovation conference in Chicago in October 2006. The paper provides examples of how leading companies are taking a proactive approach to dealing with these pressures through a combination of eco-design and business model innovation and concludes that companies outside of this industry could learn from their experiences.

In June 2007, Jamie presented a paper entitled An Empirical Study of how Innovation and the Environment are Considered in Current Engineering Design Practise at the CIRP Life Cycle Engineering conference in Tokyo, Japan which reports on work completed with a number of manufacturers from around the South-West of England. The project looked at how companies affected by environmental legislation such as the WEEE, RoHS and EuP Directives are responding to the requirements of these Directives. Activities were completed to benchmark the companies' current environmental and innovation practices. Analysis of the results led to a number of opportunities to integrate eco-design tools and principles being highlighted for each of the companies.

For further information, please contact Aidan Turnbull
Head of WEEE, RoHS & EcoDesign on +44 (0)1225 748420