Industry

ESA reveals health and safety improvements

Members of the Environmental Services Association (ESA) have reduced injuries by 78 per cent since 2004, according to a new report released today (24 February).

In ‘Aiming for Zero Harm in the Waste & Recycling Industry’, the ESA, a trade association for the UK’s resource and waste management sector, assesses the implications of the development of the industry on health and safety, and what is needed to maintain the safety of employees.

As the waste and resources industry moves into a circular economy, it says, the industry’s activities are becoming ‘increasingly mechanised and more labour intensive’. This means, it asserts, that ‘workers are handling greater volumes and a wider composition of material than ever before’, which brings ‘new and significant’ health and safety hazards into the workplace.

It gives the examples of source segregation at kerbside collections exposing workers to highway hazards and new technologies for recycling requiring workers to be more hands-on with machinery, rather than ‘in the cab of a compactor on a landfill’.

ESA reveals health and safety improvements
The front page of the ‘Aiming for Zero Harm in the Waste & Recycling Industry’ report
The report refers to Health & Safety Executive (HSE) statistics that show that despite accounting for only 0.6 per cent of the total British workforce, injury rates in the UK waste industry are four times that of the national average.

It does, however, note that since the ‘Mapping health and safety standards in the UK waste industry’ report, prepared by BOMEL in 2004, which revealed that the fatality rate in the waste management industry was 10 times higher than the national average, a ‘concerted effort’ by the industry and the HSE has resulted in a downward trend in accident rates, with a 23.7 per cent reduction in accidents over the last five years.

ESA action

The ESA launched an accident reduction charter in 2004, since which it says members have achieved a 65 per cent reduction in accidents. The most recent revision of the charter sees signatories commit to reducing the incidence rate of reportable accidents by at least 10 per cent a year until 2018, demonstrating a visible commitment to health and safety, encouraging worker engagement in health and safety and supporting the Waste Industry Safety & Health (WISH) Forum to deliver its goals.

The ESA report states that each year ESA members submit accident data returns that include the number of reportable injuries within the company, along with details of accident causation and where the accidents occurred.

The latest set of data reported by members (from 2014), it says, reveals an 11.7 per cent reduction on the 2013 figure, with an overall reduction in injuries of 78 per cent since the launch of the charter in 2004. This compares to a 23.7 per cent reduction in the wider waste industry since 2004.

Self-reported figures by ESA members show an accident rate of 919 per 100,000 employees, compared to the HSE’s provisional figure for 2014/15 of 1,715 per 100,000 for the waste and recycling industry as a whole.

The report presents several case studies of initiatives carried out by members to promote health and safety among their workforce. These include Veolia’s ‘Worksafe’ programme, which sought to encourage the use of safe behaviours through observation and education, and Grundon’s ‘Safety Week’, which each year arranges activities and communications to deliver lessons on a particular aspect of employee safety.

Formal, structured approach

ESA Policy Advisor Stephen Freeland said: “2004 marked a turning point for ESA, in which we agreed a more formal, structured approach to tackling our industry’s health and safety record head on. While there is clearly much more to do, our injury rate over the years has been heading in the right direction.

 “We are proud of the fact that our health and safety performance exceeds the rest of the waste management industry. In fact, perhaps more surprisingly, the report also shows that the reduction in accidents achieved over the last five years by ESA members surpasses most other industrial sectors and the ‘all UK industry’ average.”

Rick Brunt, HSE’s Head of Waste and Recycling, added: “HSE welcomes ESA’s analysis of their members’ performance, and I am encouraged that their findings give a clear indication that their members efforts are making a difference in the waste and recycling industry. The challenge remains for all organisations to play their part in Great Britain’s health and safety system to further improve the industry’s performance. HSE is committed to our work with organisations in the sector, such as ESA and WISH, as they drive forward further improvements.”

Commenting on the ESA report, Chris Jones, Chairman of the WISH Forum, said: “The report shows the variation in health and safety performance across the industry, and ESA members should be commended for the progress achieved. The WISH Forum has in place a health and safety road map and associated strategic goals, and we look forward to working further with ESA and others to improving standards across the entire industry.”

The full ‘Aiming for Zero Harm in the Waste & Recycling Industry’ can be read on the ESA’s website.