Albion Environmental Limited

HSE calls for vigilance after spate of incidents

The Health and Safety Executive has stressed the responsibility of employers and those with a duty to ensure safety in the workplace to safeguard workers following a spate of incidents across the waste and recycling sector this month.
The non-departmental public body, known as the HSE, made the comments while outlining its ambitions for 2011, revealing that waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) would become an increased area of focus for its work.
The waste and recycling sector is traditionally seen as one of the most dangerous professions in terms of injuries and fatalities, although it managed to record seven deaths in 2009/10 compared the 12 to 16 usually recorded in the sector annually (see letsrecycle.com story).
However, despite this improved performance, 2011 has already seen two fatalities in the industry.
These include an explosion at the Sterecycle autoclave facility in Rotherham resulting in the death of an employee (see letsrecycle.com story) and a SITA UK refuse collection operative in Kent being fatally injured following an incident with a collection vehicle (see letsrecycle.com).
The HSE said it was unable to comment on specific incidents due to legal issues. However, a spokesman said: \”The incidents earlier this year are a reminder of the health and safety responsibilities of duty-holders and employers. HSE will continue to work with industry through the Waste Industry Safety and Health (WISH) forum to look at ways to prevent people being killed or injured.\”
Incidents
Further to these comments, Wayne Williams, inspector at the HSE, also noted that the onset of adverse weather conditions, which had hampered waste collections in some parts of the country, had not led to a noticeable increase in the number of injuries or accidents.
He said: \”I think the first thing to say is even though we had that extra bitter cold we are not aware that there has been widely reported increase in the number of accidents and part of that comes from people who have not been working.\”
Mr Williams said that the low level of incidents during the extreme weather could be attributed to councils learning lessons from the harsh winter of 2009/10 when setting out plans for waste and recycling collections in 2010/11.
Ambition
“We are not aware that there has been widely reported increase in the number of accidents [due to the cold weather]”, Wayne Williams, HSE inspector 
Outling the organisation\’s ambitions for 2011, Mr Williams said that the HSE would be carrying through a large volume of work from 2010, such as its three-year national inspection initiative with eight of the leading waste management and recycling companies.
The scheme involves HSE inspectors undertaking a series of head office visits and site visits to see how health and safety is addressed across whole companies. The companies involved are: Biffa; EMR; Enterprise; May Gurney; Serco; Shanks; SITA UK; Veolia Environmental Services; Verdant Group; and, Viridor.
He highlighted their status as national companies and said, as a result he would expect that in safety terms, the \”way they do things in Scotland is the way they do things in Cornwall, for example\”.
Councils
In addition to its work with the private sector, the HSE will also seek to work with local authorities to look at their procurement practices.
Mr Williams said: \”We have got a local authority procurement inspection initiative, which started in October 2010 and will run for three years. And, we are inspecting local authorities for the contract role whether the work is done in house or it is contracted out to those management companies.\”
The HSE intends to approach all local authorities in order to participate but said it was \”realistically\” not going to be able to involve 100% of councils in the project.
WEEE
Another area of work that the HSE is set to embark on is in addressing health concerns around WEEE. Mr Williams said field officers had reported increased incidents involving dealing with WEEE material and the organisation would be forming a body of work to address this.
\”For the last two years we have been looking at skip hire businesses and this year there seems to be a lot of issues coming forward in terms of WEEE recycling and we have had issues with lead poisoning and risks around CRT [cathode-ray tubes],\” he said.
\”So it is an important area which is being seen as a more of a problem now. I mean, we haven\’t had problems with lead for years but now, with increased WEEE recycling, that is possible coming back in with this recycling.\”
Keeping pace
Mr Williams said that it was important for the HSE to reflect the concerns of its officers, explaining that it was difficult for the organisation to stay ahead of developments without this knowledge. He said: \”I don\’t think that the HSE can be ahead of the curve on all of these things.
He said: \”Certainly with the amount we are out competing with the unlicensed companies and most, if not all, of these would be operating before we get aware of them and if they were operating before we had knowledge. We don\’t have a crystal ball.
\”Keeping pace is a key phrase, it is very difficult to keep up with the developments which are going on. Some of the newer things may be in place sometime before we become aware of them. It is very difficult to keep up the pace but the things we target are specific issues.\”
In addition, Mr Williams said 2011 would see further work with both the private and public sector to assess sickness and absences in the waste and recycling sector. This would build on work carried out in October 2009 but, according to Mr Williams, it would iron out \”inconsistencies\” in the previous data (see letsrecycle.com story).
\”One of the concerns around the previous report was that there were too many inconsistencies in the previous data and we are going forward looking at a three year period. Obviously, this depends on how many volunteers we get and we are actively trying to get people involved.\”
Albion retains qualified H&S practitioners qualified to provide assessments, inspections, incident investigation and training and support for a wide range of health and safety issues. For more information, please do not hesitate to get in touch on 01292 610428 or www.albion-environmental.co.uk

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