Take extra care on a... Thursday

GENeco - including Organic Waste - has just issued its first collation of reported accidents and incidents. This first report will act as the benchmark for future comparisons as well as indicate trends and successes in making GENeco sites a safer place at which to work.

While the number of incidents during 2010 were small in number by far the greatest majority involved Organic Waste in relation to spillages and discharges, mostly from incidents where drivers had failed to uncouple pipework before driving off.

However, to put this in context, the incidents involved less than 0.06% of all the deliveries made at the treatment centres. Fortunately these Organic Waste incidents did not involve any personal injury, but this is not a trend we wish to rely upon.

Zero incidents are a much better guarantee of zero injuries.

A couple of surprising results was to see that most incidents occurred on a Thursday, and as far as Organic Waste customers are concerned, usually between 9am and 11am in the morning.

Equally surprising was the fact that most incidents occurred in the lighter brighter months of April and May and not in the dark and dismal winter months. Perhaps during those Spring months our thoughts are naturally distracted by other activities!

Kevin O'Reilly, Wessex Water's safety and security adviser who compiled this inaugural report, said: 'It is difficult to truly identify statistical trends with so few incidents - but this is a good thing. Even from this initial report we can see that one area that includes damage caused by distraction or forgetfulness, is disproportionately large in relation to the overall number of incidents. It is obvious that Organic Waste and Organic Waste's customers should be putting effort into reducing these tanker/spillage incidents and thereby save lost time, money and potential injury.'

Organic Waste news - Summer 2011