Safety Zone

Give me five

The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), Silver Spring, Maryland, has developed a new installment to its “Five to Stay Alive” series that features safety tips material recovery facility (MRF) workers should follow.

The Five to Stay Alive series offers five safety guidelines MRF workers should follow, including:

• Follow lockout/tagout always.
• Do not walk on conveyors.
• Beware of heights.
• [Practice] bale safety.
• Maintain a safe distance from moving equipment.

Hand signals

The city of Miami Solid Waste Department safety handbook provides a list of hand signals for employees to use to communicate with each other. The logic? Voice communications are sometimes impossible in certain working situations because of distance and noise. Hand signals can prevent accidents and save time. The handbook lists 16 different hand signals to communicate messages such as “slow down,” “speed up,” “stop” and “come toward me.”

Back to school caution

Approximately 100 children in the U.S. are killed every year while walking to or from school, and another 25,000 children sustain injuries from school zone accidents. In preparation for the back-to-school season, the National Waste and Recycling Association (NWRA), Arlington, Virginia, hosted a week-long safety stand down dedicated to raising collection workers’ awareness of the issue. During the week of July 31-Aug. 4, the association hosted Facebook Live and Twitter chat events as well as a national call-in dedicated to the subject as part of its 2017 Fall Back to School Safety Stand Down.

Did you know?

Extreme heat was responsible for at least three fatalities in the waste and recycling industry between 2012 and 2013.

(Source: National Waste & Recycling Association)