Waste Industry Health & Safety Guidance.
A new health and safety strategy for the waste industry has been launched in a bid to cut incident rates by 10% year-on-year and reduce the number of fatalities to zero.
The four year strategy, which was launched at the waste sector’s first health and safety summit last week (February 7), comes as the chief executive of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Judith Hackitt, highlighted the need for a hands on approach in improving health and safety.
Despite recent improvements, health and safety performance in the waste sector remains poor in relation to other industries:
- Fatality rate – 9 times the all-industry average,
- Transport-related fatal injuries account for two-thirds of the total
- RIDDOR non-fatal injury rate – 4 times the all-industry average
The key goals are:
- Strong leadership – encouraging strong leadership across the industry;
- Involve the workforce – encourage organisations to ensure that employers, managers and workers work together to prevent ill-health and injuries;
- Build competence – increase levels of competency across the industry;
- Create healthier, safer workplaces; and,
- Support SMEs – adapt and customise approached to help small and medium sized enterprises to comply with the health and safety obligations.
A number of objectives have been put in place to help achieve the goals. These include creating an effective health and safety culture, reducing the number of incidents and ill-health cases through intervention. For more information on the strategy, see the link.
