How to Create and Maintain a Culture of Safety at a Landfill

The federal government considers the waste collection industry one of the top 10 most dangerous jobs, according to the Solid Waste Association of North America.

OSHA statistics indicate that the nonfatal injury and illness rate at landfills rose to 5.3 in 2017. Fatalities at landfills also rose from previous years, with nine in both 2015 and 2016. According to OSHA, the vast majority of deaths and serious injuries occurring at landfills are the result of contact between employees and heavy equipment.

“Landfills can be, and are, very dangerous,” states Ryan Roth, landfill operations manager at LRI Landfill in Graham, WA. “There are a lot of moving pieces, with big equipment.”

It starts with a plan

The confluence of garbage trucks, compactors, dozers, transfer trailers, service vehicles, and customers at a landfill creates a hazardous situation that demands a safety protocol. “This is above all else,” Roth emphasizes. “If you don’t plan, you plan to fail. And not having a safety plan, you will fail in a big way that can cost someone their life.”

A comprehensive plan for a landfill includes:

• Injury and Illness prevention program
• Health and Safety plan
• Standard Operating Procedures
• Training program
• Review program to track the safety-related steps taken.

Blue Ridge Services, a solid waste operations and safety consulting firm, evaluates a landfill’s safety plan. To fully evaluate a site’s safety plan, Blue Ridge takes video, watches the site’s video, and examines their equipment. In addition, they ensure there’s a health and safety plan in place designed for landfills dealing with methane gas, heavy equipment, and confined spaces, per OSHA regulation.

“Is it OSHA-compliant?” queries Neal Bolton, president and lead engineer. Although OSHA doesn’t have requirements specific to landfills, there is a general duty clause about providing a safe work place, as well as a rule about having an injury and illness prevention program.

“People get run over when they’re scavenging,” Bolton notes. “Accidents happen when tractors push waste near people unloading waste. OSHA doesn’t cover that.” Therefore, to have a truly safe site, it’s important to go beyond the nominal OSHA requirements by developing SOPs for individual sites and operations.

Things get even more complicated because “different states have OSHA, and there’s federal OSHA—and some municipal workers are exempt from OSHA,” Bolton continues. “It’s a complex task.”

Implementation

But just having a written plan isn’t enough.

“The biggest issue is broken communications,” Bolton insists. He says landfills may have “great plans and documentation,” but some don’t implement them—either because they don’t know how, or they are trying to cut costs by cutting corners. In some cases, the safety protocols may be outdated.

“A landfill might have OSHA training and a safety plan document,” Bolton continues, “but that doesn’t always translate to the front lines.” For example, he says, sometimes when crew members are quizzed about what to do in emergency situations, they all give different answers. “It’s a smoking gun [indicating] that plans don’t get translated to the front lines. They may have had initial training, but there’s no follow-up or ongoing training.”

How do you convert safety plans and procedures into action for the employees? Develop SOPs, Bolton says. Blue Ridge offers five-minute refresher videos to help, but says that ultimately, it’s the manager’s job to translate protocols to their staff.

Documenting safety training and practices is important because it “helps keep track on where your team members are and what they are ready for,” Roth says. “We want to set our team up for success, giving them the confidence to handle whatever issues come their way.”

A culture of safety

Confidence, communication, and attitude guarantee the success of a safety plan. “Attitude is a well-worn word used in industrial safety,” acknowledge Milton Knight, CEO of New Waste Concepts Inc. He recognizes that attitude goes hand-in-hand with communication.

“We just got off a job for an engineering firm (Verdantas) and environmental remediation contractor (USA Environmental) where we met twice a day about safety,” Knight continues.

Every morning they talked about the project and the goals for the day, along with a quick discussion about the key aspects of safety, such as having a spotter when they were backing up a heavy piece of equipment, beeping the horn on the tracked application vehicle before reversing direction, always being aware of the heavy equipment operating in the vicinity, and making sure the operator was strapped into the TAV with a seat belt. Then, at the end of the day, before leaving, they would meet again to go over any violations or incidents that might have occurred or nearly occurred that day. “These meetings often took only 5-10 minutes, but they were important.”

LRI Landfill (A Waste Connections Company) is a safety-driven company, says Roth. During the hiring process, they look for a willingness to learn and a desire to do the right thing. “We empower every single team member to step up and hit the ‘all stop’ to stop all operations in any unsafe situation. We remind the team that we are all here for each other. Our number one responsibility is to ensure we all go home the way we came in.” To encourage team members, they have regular “safety stand-downs,” when they stop everything to gather and talk about the job, safety concerns and any incidents that have occurred in the industry.

“Every person needs to be engaged to have a culture,” Bolton contends.

Common mistakes

Brief “tailgate talks” can be as effective as regular safety-specific meetings—and both should focus on improvement by learning from mistakes.

“Nothing’s new,” Bolton grumbles. “We see the same old mistakes all the time: people not aware of their surroundings or working too close to trucks; trucks too close to each other…” It’s critical to minimize the number of people on the ground and not put tractors near people. He also advises keeping a spotter in a protected location and not letting customers dump where crews are working.

“We tip trailers full of garbage off of a bank where operators in a D9 dozer and a 836 compactor are waiting to handle the waste,” Roth visualizes. “This is a dangerous spot, as you can be dumped on as drivers are backing on the tipper. There is not much visibility, so before they can back in, the laborer and operator need to be in the ‘safe zone’ on the tipper and clear the driver to back.” He says they have zero toleration for boots on the ground in the Hot Zone – the working face where all traffic is guided.

Accidents often happen when people are in a hurry. “Rushing things—being in a hurry to turn trucks, place waste, cover it up to go home…” Roth lists a familiar practice that can lead to accidents. “We need to take our time and do things the right way.”

Cell phone distraction is another “huge issue,” Bolton acknowledges. “Most effective programs don’t allow cell phones.” Still, he says, the biggest factor is someone on the ground: scavengers.

Training: where, why, and how often

Overcoming these habitual mistakes takes training. Targeted training makes “a huge impact,” Roth believes. “This empowers the team member to have confidence in the task as well as their team members around them as we all work together. I believe this is the first step in trusting your leadership, team members and oneself.”

Effective training begins at onboarding. “As someone is brought on board, they go over all our SOPs and site safety training,” Roth details. Some topics are required by law: confined space, lock-out/tag-out, blood-borne pathogens. But optimal training should go beyond legal requirements to cover concerns, including operating heavy equipment near customers, traffic safety and spotter safety.

At LRI Landfill, laborers spend a month or more following a lead. Operators read the equipment manuals, go through safety modules, and start off on the tipper, where they are observed and coached on a regular basis. Roth says the tipper “gives them more time to observe and listen to understand the ‘lingo’ as well as the flow of things.”

Before the operator switches to a different piece of equipment, they will be evaluated on the current piece of equipment, and then read the new piece of equipment’s manual. As they begin to work on the new piece of equipment, they will work alongside the lead operator and will be observed, in addition to communicating on a two-way radio. “This is to set the individual up for success and to [assure] them they are not alone,” Roth explains. “This is not a sink-or-swim type of industry … or company.”

It’s important to do this training onsite. Much of it is related to operational processes—training equipment operators and landfill spotters—but safety is at the core. Thus, tying in training with a site-specific safety plan will be most effective.

Roth likes to use a combination of team members, management, and third-parties such as the local fire department, SWANA, or OEMs to conduct training sessions. “We have had CAT come in to do machine-specific training.”

In addition to providing training on individual machines, a third-party trainer can sometimes provide “fresh eyes” to catch things missing from a training protocol. They can fine-tune and update safety processes.

Training sessions and changes in the training protocol should always be documented. Employees need to sign off for every training session. Documenting safety training may help a landfill avert litigation if an accident should occur.

Training shouldn’t end at the initial new-employee session. Regular ongoing training is necessary to keep up to date on new equipment and as the industry learns new “best practices” or as things change at a specific site. Good safety training programs evolve. 

Whether safety training occurs daily, weekly or monthly, whether it’s done by management or a third-part trainer, it should be:

• Relevant to the site
• Based on historical problems
• Brief (5-15 minutes)
• Inclusive (long-time employees, new-hires and contractors)
• Consistent
• Documented.

“We do regular observations on operators and waste handling in the Hot Zone,” Roth indicates, adding that they also do quarterly fire drills and evacuations, as well as annual CPR & AED training.

Hot Zone Plan training occurs every day. “We all talk about ways in which our Hot Zone can get better so we are the safest place to work—for our employees and our customers.” Regarding other safety topics, Roth says they work hard to present them in a way that gets safety “from the head to the heart” with our employees. “Waste Connections fosters a culture of personal growth and development for all employees.”

Champions and buy-in

However good a safety plan is, without a champion to reinforce the culture of safety, the message can get lost. Bolton says when a safety plan is introduced or updated, there can be some push-back from long-time employees. He quotes data from the National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health that suggests as workers get older, the risk of fatality increases – and yet, the attitude of “that’s the way we’ve always done it” prevails.

Outside experts like Blue Ridge are effective in training, Bolton believes. “The problem is you have to hand that over to local guys. We aren’t onsite all the time. We give the platform, but there needs to be a champion for change—someone in authority.”

A champion is usually someone in management who leads the charge on safety, working to reinforce the culture. Sites with a safety champion tend to be safer. A champion can inspire buy-in from other employees.

Bolton references the learning pyramid explained by National Training Labs. According to this method, more passive learning techniques—such as lectures and reading—result in less material being retained by the student than more involved learning techniques, such as demonstration and teaching. “The more involved you are, the more information you retain,” he underscores. “Read, practice, present. The highest level is preparing to teach others.” He says few landfills do this, but those that do have a great safety culture.

If a crew isn’t paying attention during the weekly safety meeting or is joking around, Bolton advises assigning teaching assignments. “Get the crew involved. Let the dozer operator give the talk on fire safety.” Doing so gives the employees ownership of a safety topic or issue; they often become more dedicated to ensuring company-wide adherence to protocols in “their” area.

Rewarding good behavior might be another way to accentuate safety training. “It is important, but can be overdone,” Roth thinks. He doesn’t want employees doing the right thing just for the reward or recognition; he wants them to do it simply because it’s the right thing to do. However, he adds, “we must acknowledge the good just as much as the bad. We recognize folks for going above and beyond or for thinking of a new idea. We love to see folks improving our safety culture.”

Similarly, an important part of creating a safety culture is making everyone feel comfortable. “There is no such thing as a bad question,” Roth insists. “We encourage our team to be there for each other, to uplift each other and celebrate success together.”

Ultimately, safety is about attitude as much as it is about a plan.

Changing procedures and equipment to improve safety

Knight believes safety is an amalgamation of attitude and design. Machinery makes the job easier. “Elements like rear-facing wide-angle cameras are just as important in a landfill as they are on a school bus,” Knight postulates. Other equipment that contributes to safety includes seat belts for the operator and back-up horns.

New Waste Concepts doesn’t stop there. “Our new CAPS P series TAV and mixing platform are set up with safety as a focus,” Knight explains. The old way of spraying a slurry material involved several people high off the ground on the top deck of a hydroseeder watching an operator apply daily cover while the TAV is moving. The sprayer operator is outside, in all kinds of weather, while another driver is pulling the hydroseeder. The operator often gets coated with material flying back in his face. “Not a safe design.”

The new method features the operator/sprayer seated in a cab with his seatbelt on. “He has a wide-angle backup camera allowing him to see what he has applied,” Knight explains. “He cannot fall down or fall off the hydroseeder, as that is now the ‘mixing station,’ typically located back at the shop. So, conceptual design and the final build needs to consider the safety operator.” 

On repeat

At a recent project site, Bolton met workers who had only ever seen one landfill. “Most have a limited view.” That’s why he likes to share experiences as a sort of wake-up call that “It can happen here.”

“Most of the time after a fatality, everyone is safety-minded,” Bolton observes. “Real buy-in occurs after tragedy.” The trick is to keep buy-in going. “People get by if they can get by. As an industry, that’s not working. They need to be reminded about safety practices.”