The blueprint, developed by the Waste Industry Safety and Health forum (WISH), follows the launch of the Health & Safety Executives (HSE) four year strategy in February 2013, which outlines the overall strategy for improving health and safety in the waste management industry.
Actions fall under five strategic themes providing strong leadership, involving the workforce, building competence, creating healthier and safer workplaces, and providing support for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).
Key initiatives included in the blueprint are the development of leadership standards from within the waste sector, publishing new training materials on successful worker involvement, and work with customers to use their leverage to promote improved competence.
Commenting on the blueprint, Chris Jones, WISH chair and director of risk management and compliance at Cory Environmental, said: WISH has been working to improve health, safety and welfare in waste and recycling for more than a decade, and weve made some good progress in that time.
‘If the industry combines its efforts, contributes and supports the work needed then everything is achievable, and without unreasonable cost or burden’
Chris Jones, WISH chair and director of risk management and compliance at Cory Environmental
Theres no shortage of desire in the industry to improve our record this was clear from the summit in February and the amount of energy and commitment been shown in getting us to this point in publishing the blueprint.
If the industry combines its efforts, contributes and supports the work needed then everything is achievable, and without unreasonable cost or burden. The more that take part in, and contribute to, the greater will be the knowledge base, the wider the experience and the lesser will be the burden upon everybody.
We wanted this to be a sort of road map to healthier and safer industry something that lets anyone in waste and recycling join us on a journey. Theres a long road ahead but were off in the right direction.
Working group
WISH has established a working group for each of the strategy goals, which will oversee progress in relation to each of the objectives outlined in the blueprint, as well as a steering group, which will oversee overall progress towards the aims.
Each of the working groups is also intended to act as a knowledge hub which will communicate with other industry stakeholder groups working on similar initiatives, in order to harmonise work across the industry.
Graeme Walker, HSEs waste and recycling lead, said: This is a really important development in the drive for improved health and safety in the waste and recycling sector it shows the industrys unequivocal commitment to reducing the number of people killed, injured or made unwell. We know from our experience in other sectors, such as construction, that long-term sustainable improvements rely on strong industry leadership and that is what we are seeing here.
WISH is made up of representatives from the waste management industry, as well as trade associations, national and local government bodies and the HSE.
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