Confused UK recycling sector is really deadly

By Rory | Published: 27 January, 2010

If you work in waste and recycling in the UK, you might not be reassured to hear it has a work fatality rate nine times the national average. And you might be even more alarmed when you hear some privatisation-happy local authorities are clueless when it comes to their legal responsibility to keep you safe.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the UK government’s workplace health and safety watchdog, says it has “identified that a contributing factor may be that some local authorities are unclear what their legal duties are and mistakenly believe that putting a service out to contract relieves them of all health and safety responsibilities.”

HSE says it hopes new online guidance will help local authorities understand the importance of a sensible approach to health and safety when it comes to procuring and managing waste and recycling services, in a bid to help reduce death and injury. According to HSE figures, the recycling industry has nine times more fatalities than the national average and four times as many workers suffer injuries.

HSE chair Judith Hackitt said: “The guidance will help local authorities understand the full extent of their role when managing waste and recycling contractors. HSE wants to see occupational health and safety become an integral but common sense part of the specification, procurement and management of waste and recycling contracts.”

HSE research has also found workers in the waste and recycling sector have higher sickness rates.

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Pesticide pushers kill thousands in Bangladesh

By Rory | Published: 18 January, 2010
NOT GREEN Banned pesticides are given the hard sell in Bangladesh, killing thousands each year.

NOT GREEN Banned pesticides are given the hard sell in Bangladesh, killing thousands each year.

Thousands of Bangladeshi workers are dying of pesticide poisoning each year, as a result of unsafe use of often banned products.

Meanwhile, safer, greener agricultural methods are ignored in the face of a sustained and richly-resourced promotional campaign by multinational pesticide producers.

An annual government health survey has found that pesticide-related poisoning may be responsible for several thousand deaths each year in Bangladesh. 

The 2009 Health Bulletin, released in December and based on health statistics from 2008, recorded 7,438 pesticide-related poisoning deaths at more than 400 hospitals nationwide amongst men and women aged 15-49.

“Considering the widespread illiteracy of our farmers, it should be made mandatory for pesticide producers and sellers to print pictures on pesticide containers showing how to use and dispose of them properly after use,” Mohammad Mahfuzullah, an environmental activist and executive director of the Centre for Sustainable Development (CFSD), told the UN’s IRIN news service.

Compounding the problem is the increasing pesticide consumption in the country, including many which are highly toxic.

According to the most recent government figures available, 37,712 tons of pesticides were sold in Bangladesh in 2007, an increase of 145.3 per cent on 2001.
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Climate change is a class issue

By Rory | Published: 17 January, 2010
CLASS ACT Vulnerable communities, even in the most prosperous nations, will be the first and worst hit by climate change, says WE ACT’s Peggy M Shepard.

CLASS ACT Vulnerable communities, even in the most prosperous nations, will be the first and worst hit by climate change, says WE ACT’s Peggy M Shepard.

Global warming, pollution and the environmental impact of energy production impose a greater burden on low-income and disadvantaged communities.

The message, spelled out in papers in a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Justice, includes a call for urgent strategies to prevent inequities.

Papers in the dedicated ‘climate justice’ issue emerged from a US conference on climate justice held last year in New York City, co-hosted by West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT) and the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum on Climate Change.

An editorial co-authored by WE ACT’s Peggy M Shepard and Cecil Corbin-Mark notes: “On the path towards a renewed environment, there have been many winners and losers. Our communities have generally been on the losing side.

“As a nation, we cannot embark on climate action legislation and policies anchored by the notion that there will always be winners and losers.” Read More »

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Four digit fine for four digit loss

By Rory | Published: 17 January, 2010
FOUR FINGERS Plastics recycling worker Wesley Dickinson lost four fingers as a result of the negligence of his employer. The firm received a small fine.

FOUR FINGERS Plastics recycling worker Wesley Dickinson lost four fingers as a result of the negligence of his employer. The firm received a small fine.

A UK plastics recycling company has been fined £2,500 after a worker had four of his fingers severed.

Wesley Dickinson, 22, was trying to remove a guillotine jam at Centriforce Products Ltd in Liverpool when his fingers became trapped. Doctors reattached two of his fingers, but they have limited movement.

The company, which admitted breaching safety regulations, said it regretted the accident in May 2008. Centriforce was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after the incident and was fined £2,500 this month by Liverpool magistrates and ordered to pay £2,438 in costs.

HSE inspector Martin Paren said: “This incident has had a devastating impact on Mr Dickinson, who is only in his early 20s. He cannot return to his old job and will not be able to do manual work in the foreseeable future, due to the limited strength and movement in his right hand.”

He added: “The company should have had a guard on the guillotine to prevent workers from reaching the blade. An automatic mechanism should also have been in place so that the power was cut if the guard was opened. Instead Mr Dickinson wrongly assumed that a colleague had switched the guillotine off, and he had four fingers cut off as a result.”

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US work safety chief calls for good safe green jobs

By Rory | Published: 17 January, 2010
WORKPLACE REVOLUTION David Michaels says the assumption that green jobs are necessarily good jobs is an unsafe one.

WORKPLACE REVOLUTION David Michaels says the assumption that green jobs are necessarily good jobs is an unsafe one.

The newly installed leader of the US government’s workplace safety watchdog has made his first public act a call for green jobs to be good, safe jobs.

On 9 December 2009 David Michaels was  confirmed as the Obama administration’s Assistant Secretary of Labor for occupational safety and health.

The head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) told a ‘Going green’ workshop, run by the US government’s workplace health research arm NIOSH on 16 December 2009, it was “very fitting and proper that my first speech as Assistant Secretary should address the issue of green jobs – what green jobs mean for the earth, for our economy and for American workers.”

He said Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis “has provided the Department of Labor with her vision, which is simply and profoundly: ‘Good jobs for everyone.’ And everyone at this conference understands all too well that green jobs cannot be good jobs unless they are safe jobs.”

Michaels acknowledged the many voices supporting a “green revolution” to reform the economy, but warned: “Employers who race into this green economy without paying attention to worker safety will blunder into many preventable injuries and deaths. We can’t afford this. We can’t allow this to happen.”

Instead, he outlined his plan to ensure workplace safety is an integral part of the new greener economy. “It is vital, now, that we integrate worker safety and health concerns into green manufacturing, green construction and green energy,” he told the NIOSH workshop.

“Most importantly: We must push worker health and safety as a critical, necessary, and recognized element of green design, green lifecycle analysis and green contracts.

“It’s not a matter of choosing either a green future or safe jobs. It’s both. It’s all or nothing, and NIOSH, OSHA and everyone else needs to play a role in building this sustainable economy – an economy that will provide sufficient jobs, green jobs, and jobs that are safe for all workers.”

Workers should not be overlooked when planning safer, green ways of working, he added, saying this was OSHA’s ‘Green Reform Principle Number One.’
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Waste and recycling is a sick industry

By Rory | Published: 7 January, 2010
HUMAN WASTE Workers in the waste and recycling industry are far more likely to do sick - but officials cant tell the cause because the sickness data is rubbish.

HUMAN WASTE Workers in the waste and recycling industry are far more likely to go sick - but officials can't tell the cause because the sickness data is rubbish.

Workers in the UK waste and recycling industry have much higher sickness rates than other local authority workers, research by a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) agency has found.

Review of sickness absence data in the waste and recycling industry, a report prepared by the Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL), found the sector recorded more days off work than other departments within local government. It also found record keeping was inconsistent and inadequate, so data “failed to accurately capture the reasons for absence”.

The report revealed local authority employees in the waste industry had an average of 12.8 days’ absence. In contrast, the Local Government Employers (LGE) absence survey, published in 2007, reported an average of 9.6 days’ absence for wider local authority workers.

HSL statistician Dr Eileen Holmes, the author of the report, commented: “The research revealed some interesting findings and indicated there are higher rates of absenteeism in local authority waste workers than in the wider public sector.” She said, however, variations in the quality of data collected by local authorities “meant it has not been possible to identify the most common reason for someone taking time off work and, it follows, to recommend measures to highlight and address those underlying causes.”

The study looked at data compiled in 2007 and 2008 from 16 local authorities and two private companies.

“The current system makes it near impossible to determine the most frequently occurring absences or to properly compare like for like,” Dr Holmes added, calling for standardised criteria for recording this information.

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“Make or break” for climate talks, say unions

By Rory | Published: 17 December, 2009

Governments must finally step up to their responsibilities and reach a serious agreement at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen before it is too late, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has stated.

“We cannot risk waiting any longer,” said ITUC general secretary Guy Ryder. “Decisions must be taken and action has to start immediately. Governments must show the necessary flexibility to recognise that not everything they want can be had this week, yet achieve the most ambitious agreement possible to begin tackling climate change.

“It is essential that basic principles of solidarity be respected, in order to attain a just transition for working people and to provide differentiated responsibilities for developing countries. The human, environmental and economic costs will otherwise be massive.”

Ryder was speaking yesterday at the close of activities at the World of Work pavilion, where some 30 events have been organised over three days by unions from all regions and sectors.  Hundreds of trade unionists are in Copenhagen for the UN climate change conference, and are pressing their country’s leaders to commit themselves to social justice in the transition towards low carbon and climate-resilient economies.
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Four out of 10 jobs are carbon intensive says ILO

By Rory | Published: 14 December, 2009

CARBON COPY What do we want? Green jobs instead of dirty ones. When do we want them? Immediately after politicians get serious and reach agreement in Copenhagen.

Nearly 40 per cent of all jobs worldwide are in highly carbon intensive sectors, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has said. The UN body says its contribution to the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen will be to draw attention to the value of “green jobs”.

ILO with other UN agencies can contribute among others to facilitating economic and social transition for key sectors, it says, by the promotion of green jobs and “greening the workplace.”

  • Le BIT va traiter de l’emploi et des emplois verts à la Conférence des Nations Unies sur le changement climatique à Copenhague.
    La OIT se concentrará en los empleos verdes, problemas laborales en la Conferencia sobre Cambio Climático de las Naciones Unidas en Copenhagen

 The ILO’s latest World of Work report attempt to quantify the employment challenge arising from the urgency to curb carbon dioxide emissions. It estimates that nearly 40 per cent of all jobs worldwide – accounting for about 600 million workers – are in highly carbon intensive sectors.

The report says imposing a price on CO2 emissions and using the revenues to cut labour taxes, employment would rise by 0.5 per cent by 2014. This is equivalent to over 14.3 million net new jobs for the world economy as a whole. And even larger gains would arise due to technological change induced by green policies.

Ms Sachiko Yamamoto, director of the ILO Asia and the Pacific office, said: “There is growing international awareness of the need to arrest climate change, in order to put the world economy on a more sustainable track. Already, as part of packages to overcome the ongoing global economic and jobs crisis, countries have launched infrastructure investments designed to promote transitions to a greener economy.

“Such efforts would at the same time serve social objectives because spending on green projects promotes recovery and job creation.”

  •  Green policies and jobs: A double dividend?, chapter from the ILO World of Work report, pdf.
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Big, green and with blood on its hands

By Rory | Published: 11 December, 2009

Top US retailer Kohl’s is really, really proud of its award-winning environmental credentials. It has a whole website devoted to “Kohl’s green scene”, and it sees being retail’s green giant as a reflection of its corporate responsibility. But workers around the world regret the firm has not been so diligent when it comes to sorting out the working environment in the sweatshops it supports.  

Kohl’s is a company that considers itself in the vanguard when it comes to corporate good practice on environmental matters. On 2 December this year, Kohl’s declared it had become “the first retailer to announce a commitment to reach net zero US greenhouse gas emissions as part of its ongoing partnership with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Climate Leaders program.”

It had already received the agency’s Green Power Leadership Award for both 2007 and 2008.

According to Ken Bonning, Kohl’s executive vice president of store planning and logistics: “We want to demonstrate that it is possible for a large company to have a successful business model and operate in a sustainable way.”

It’s the type of corporate green hype that rankles with the US-based International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF). “Unfortunately Kohl’s focus on sustainability hasn’t spilled over to the labour rights of its workers,” it says. “Kohl’s has been connected to a number of sweatshops over the past two decades and yet hasn’t taken the necessary steps to implement its code of conduct (called the Terms of Engagement) which includes freedom of association.”

Working for Scrooge: Worst companies of 2009 for the Right to Associate, published by ILRF on 10 December, puts the spotlight on a part of the company’s “successful business model” that isn’t winning any prizes. This includes human rights abuses at the firm’s suppliers in Nicaragua and Turkey.

They earn the company a place on ILRF’s “top offenders” list, which features corporations “selected on the basis of their ties to violence against trade unions and suppression of the universal right to organise.” Read More »

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Clean energy set to be third largest industry

By Rory | Published: 11 December, 2009
STANDING TALL This Chinese turbine factory worker is benefiting from his country's clean energy technology boom.

STANDING TALL This turbine factory worker is benefiting from China's clean energy technology boom, up to 4th in the global sales league.

Clean energy technology is on track to become the third largest industrial sector globally with a rapidly increasing share taken up by China, a report from global conservation organisation WWF has predicted. 

Clean Economy, living Planet – Building strong clean energy technology industries, released today at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, is a first ever worldwide country ranking by clean energy sales, WWF says. Relative to GDP, Denmark and Brazil top the league for clean energy industries, followed by Germany.

The report predicts that by 2020 the industry will be worth €1600 billion (£1,450bn; US$2,355bn) a year, ranking behind automobiles and electronics as the third largest industrial sector. In 2007, clean energy technology had a sales volume of €630 billion and was already larger than the global pharmaceutical industry, the report says.

“This is the clean economy growth happening now with only a partial Kyoto protocol international framework supporting clean energy development, patchy national support for green energy and huge subsidies to fossil fuel use,” said Kim Carstensen, leader of WWF’s global climate initiative.

“Imagine what is possible with a successful Copenhagen climate deal and the national mechanisms to deliver its outcomes – clean energy is where the money is going to be and this is where energy security is going to be.” Read More »

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