The Waste Industry Safety and Health (WISH) Forum is set to publish updated guidance for the waste sector on machinery safety in recycling and recovery plants.
Data published by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in December 2021 shows that 30% of fatal workplace injuries in the waste sector between 2016/17 and 2020/21 occurred after contact with moving machinery.
Written in collaboration with the HSE, the WISH WASTE 33 guidance document will be relevant to anyone operating a materials recycling facility (MRF), including waste management companies and local authorities that have their own operations in-house.
Ashley Wild is health and safety lead at LARAC, the organisation which represents local authority recycling officers, and sits on the WISH steering group that developed the new guidance.
He told letsrecycle.com: “The guidance provides updates, case studies, best practice and things to consider around the use of machinery and plants within recovery and recycling facilities.
“Pre-2000, there weren’t any recorded fatalities regarding the use of plant and machinery within the recycling and recovery sector.
“However, over the course of the last 20 years or so, the number of injuries relating to plant and machinery has increased, as has the number of RIDDOR-reportable injuries.”
WISH circulated the guidance among its steering group for final sign-off following a meeting on Wednesday (27 July) and expects to publish WISH WASTE 33 by 5 August.
Once WISH 33 is out the HSE are expecting operators to take note
The document covers a number of ‘key areas’ including the general principles of machinery safety; physical machinery safety measures; considerations for use; checks, tests and monitoring; interventions and maintenance, amongst others.
Mr Wild says secure isolation and lock-off processes in particular were “very high” on the HSE’s agenda.
The HSE’s long-term plan is to carry out up to 500 industry inspections between October 2022 and April 2023 off the back of the document’s publication, Mr Wild says.
“The HSE will consider this document as part of their inspection regime and will expect the industry to be aware of the new guidance, including the supporting information sheets relating to trommel screens, balers and shredders,” Mr Wild said.
“Operators would be wise to review WISH WASTE 33 in collaboration with WASTE 29, which incorporates practical lock-off and isolation guidance. Both documents are likely to become the baseline standards that the HSE will look to enforce against when it comes to machinery safety.
“Once WISH 33 is out in the wider domain, the HSE are expecting operators to take note of it. If the HSE visit a waste site as part of their inspection regime, they’re going to expect some level of consideration given to this guidance document.”
More recent data published by the HSE earlier this month showed the waste and recycling sector recorded just one fatal injury in 2021/22, the lowest figure for the past six years (see letsrecycle.com story).
However, while the number of fatalities has fallen, Mr Wild says the number of serious incidents and injuries is “actually generally increasing”. To explain the increase, Mr Wild pointed to greater waste volumes as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Obviously, the infrastructure capacity has been stretched, trying to deal with that additional material throughput,” he said. “There are cost pressures and performance pressures on those contractors and those authorities that process material.
“With these increased time pressures, there’s a requirement to keep machinery running longer and harder. We try to minimise downtime and, of course, there is a risk that operatives will try to find shortcuts to make things quicker.”
Mr Wild added that the use of plant and machinery in the waste industry is “relatively new, having only really been around for 20 years or so” and therefore, “the increase in incidents mirrors the increase in machinery use across the industry.”
The HSE has documented a number of prosecutions relating to accidents involving machinery in recent times.
Earlier this month, Stephen Jones, the director of waste management company Recycle Cymru Ltd, was jailed for nine years for manslaughter by gross negligence after a worker died in a baling accident (see letsrecycle.com story).
In November 2017, employee Norman Butler climbed a conveyor belt at the Recycle Cymru’s site in Rhyl to dislodge a blockage. He was later found dead from blood loss at the bottom of a connecting chute in a compaction chamber, with his left foot severed at the ankle.
And, in April, the HSE said Bristol-based skip hire company Bateman Skips was fined more than £60,000 after an employee sustained crush injuries to his arm.
According to the HSE, an employee was asked in May 2018 to repair a conveyor belt feeding the picking station. He was injured when his arm was drawn into the mechanism whilst realigning the belt. An HSE investigation found that Bateman Skips “failed to ensure that the workforce was provided with adequate training and suitable safeguards for dealing with blockages and adjusting the equipment.”
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