In its Annual Report for Great Britain published last week (October 27), HSE reveals that there were 6,000 cases of work-related illnesses and 5,000 cases of workplace injuries in the waste sector alone last year.
Around 5.1% of employees in the waste sector suffered from an illness they believe was caused or made worse by their work, which HSE said was “statistically significantly higher than the rate for workers across all industries”.
And, the rate of injuries within the waste workplace is 4.1% – around twice the average across all UK industries.
Almost 70% of specified injuries in the water and waste sector were due to either slips, trips or falls, falls from a height or being struck by an object. Lifting and handling accounted for around a third of injuries which required more than seven days off work.
HSE inspectors issued 310 enforcement notices across the waste sector last year. There were also 25 prosecution cases against the waste sector, with nearly all resulting in guilty verdicts for at least one offence.
Waste sector only
However, direct comparison with injury statistics for previous years is difficult, as this year HSE has presented statistics for the waste sector only without the inclusion of the recycling sector, because, it says: “the recycling industry is small relative to the waste sector”.
Previously, data for both the waste and recycling industries has been presented together, and the 2013/14 figures shows a fall in the number of injuries to waste and recycling workers compared to 2012/13 (see letsrecycle.com story).
But, according to HSE: “statistics from previous years show the contribution of the recycling industry to the totality of work-related illness and injury in the combined waste and recycling sector to be small. Further, the rate of illness and injury is broadly similar for the combined waste and recycling industry and the waste industry on its own.”
In addition, HSE points out that recycling – including the collecting, sorting, separating and stripping of used goods – is classified within the Standard Industrial Classification as being part of the wholesale and retail trade sector.
Employer reporting
The 5,000 injury figure for last year also includes almost 1,900 employer-reported non-fatal injuries to employees in the waste sector.
But, the report notes that throughout all sectors, non-fatal injury notifications from employers are “substantially under-reported”, with current levels of reporting estimated at below half.
Reported non-fatal injuries are categorised as either specified (a pre-defined list of certain injury types) or as resulting in more than seven days off work.
Working days lost
The annual HSE report also estimates the number of working days lost in the sector:
- An averaged central estimate of around 220,000 working days were lost in the waste sector to self-reported illnesses caused or made worse the work in 2013/14, averaging out at around 2.10 days lost per worker each year.
- An averaged central estimate of around 79,000 working days were lost in the waste sector to non-fatal injuries sustained at work, which works out as around 0.71 days lost per worker each year on average.
Fatalities
The injury figures for 2014/15 follow provisional fatality data released by HSE in July 2015, which showed there were 11 waste related deaths last year – five of which were workers and six who were members of the public (see letsrecycle.com story).
The latest injury figures confirm the figure of five waste worker deaths last year, but the data does not include the six deaths caused by collisions with a Glasgow city council refuse truck in December 2014 (see letsrecycle.com story), as that incident has been classed as a road traffic accident and is therefore not included in waste sector-related deaths.
The total number of fatal injuries to workers in the waste sector over the last five years is 33. Over the last five years the worker fatality rate in the waste sector has fluctuated and been between around five and 20 times the rate across all UK industries.
The data in the HSE report was compiled largely from the Labour Force Survey – a large-scale, national survey of households – complimented by statutory notifications of workplace injuries data under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrence Regulations (RIDDOR).
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