Safety in Paper Recycling

Scrap paper recyclers need to focus on certain key hazards if they want to prevent accidents and injuries while controlling their workers’ comp and other insurance costs. 

By Robert L. Reid

Keeping workers safe as they load, unload, process, and otherwise handle scrap paper is a constant challenge. In addition to the basic hazards faced by any industrial operation, there are certain fiber-specific risks that paper recyclers need to address to prevent accidents or injuries, keep their workers’ compensation rates down, and control other costs such as fire insurance. 

Attitudes and Behavior
Perhaps the greatest hazard paper recyclers must overcome is that some workers seriously underestimate the risks associated with recovered fiber because “it’s just paper.” They seem to think that a bale of OCC that’s stacked too high and leaning too far over can’t really hurt them because it’s just paper. Or they believe there’s nothing dangerous about running over a pile of loose ONP behind a roll-off truck that’s about to back up because it’s just paper. And, of course, since it’s just paper, there’s nothing wrong with climbing up a conveyor to stomp on a paper jam at the infeed to a baler or shear-shredder.
   “If you had metal flying around up there, you’re not going to crawl up that conveyor,” says Mike Mattia, ISRI’s director of risk management, pointing to two shear-shredder fatalities he’s studied. “But it was paper, and so both times a guy went crawling up the conveyor and somehow fell in.” 
   Mattia also knows of incidents in which workers drove forklifts “very nonchalantly” around stacks of paper bales in a warehouse, taking turns too closely or backing into the bales. “You’d never do that with metal bales,” he asserts, but there have been “a huge number of accidents” in which such behavior made stacks of paper bales fall onto a worker. 
   Similar accidents can happen if a load of paper bales shifts inside a truck or railcar. Weyerhaeuser Recycling (Federal Way, Wash.), for instance, suffered two fatalities in three years when truck drivers were struck by bales that fell out as they opened the doors of their trailers. Yet when Weyerhaeuser began a new education effort to prevent such accidents, “I was amazed at some responses from drivers who had no concept that a bale could do so much harm,” recalls Sue Jones, Weyerhaeuser Recycling’s business transportation manager.
   Indeed, the disconnect between the more-recognized hazards of working around scrap metal and the too-often-unrecognized risks from scrap paper is so great that ReMA once sent out safety materials that asked the rhetorical question: What will hurt you more—getting hit by a ton of paper or a ton of metal?

Balers and Other Machinery
On the equipment side, balers are an especially hazardous piece of equipment for paper recyclers. Between 1986 and 2000, some 29 workers were killed in accidents involving a horizontal baler, with 24 of those fatalities occurring at paper recycling facilities, reports ISRI’s video Working Safe and Smart With Balers, one of several such training aids paper recyclers can use to educate their employees (see “Watch and Learn” on page 84). 
   Most of these accidents occurred when a worker tried to clear a paper jam at the infeed chute, fell into the baling chamber, and either activated the baler’s electronic eye or was knocked unconscious or otherwise unable to prevent a fellow employee from manually operating the system.
   Though lockout/tagout efforts are designed to prevent such incidents, balers and conveyors often operate on separate power systems, Mattia notes. So even when an employee deactivates the conveyor, he doesn’t automatically deactivate the baler. 
   Conveyors themselves also pose special risks for paper recyclers. While metal recyclers experience more overall conveyor-related accidents, paper plants are far more susceptible to one specific risk—having workers “ride along” a sunken conveyor as they sort recovered fiber. 
   “They’re on a moving belt—probably they’re supposed to be sorting on the ground, but people end up on the belt and the belt’s moving,” explains Marty Davis, president of Midland Davis Corp. (Moline, Ill.), who is also president of ISRI’s Paper Stock Industries Chapter. As a result, the worker can easily slip and fall as he steps off the belt or when he suddenly realizes that he’s moving onto the upward portion of the conveyor, Davis notes. 
   Even forklifts can pose an elevated risk for paper recyclers because of the custom of processing and storing scrap paper indoors, which means that paper firms do much more loading and unloading of material from warehouse docks than do metal recyclers, Mattia explains. If the truck being loaded or unloaded isn’t properly chocked, the forklift moving in and out can actually push the trailer far enough away from the dock to make the forklift fall. This is also a risk for metal recyclers, Mattia says, but it happens more frequently at paper firms.

Bales and Paper-Handling Problems
Another potential risk that’s somewhat higher for paper recyclers involves the stacking of paper bales. Not only do paper bales tend to get stacked higher than metal bales, Mattia says, but the individual paper bales also tend to be less stable. Riskier forklift driving (as described earlier) is one reason, of course, but the very nature of the material being baled also makes the paper a riskier package.
   Though metal bales usually have good, solid edges that hold together, Mattia explains, “paper is different—you can compress it into a bale and wrap it with wire, but the minute it comes out the paper starts puckering between the wires, and if you’re not very careful you’ll get rounded edges.”
   Those rounded edges mean a less-stable stack, especially when four, five, even six or more bales are stacked. Then, if glitches in the baling system produce some bales that aren’t as dense as others, or if a misfire fastens certain bales with fewer wires, the result can be a stack just waiting to topple over.
   Poorly stacked paper can be especially dangerous once the material has been loaded behind the closed doors of a truck trailer or railroad boxcar. Weyerhaeuser Recycling, for instance, learned an important lesson after investigating one such fatality. “The way that trailer was loaded was actually no different from the last thousand loads that had come in,” notes Sue Jones. “It just happened to be the load that shifted in transit.”
   But while the possibility of such fatal accidents remains high, the frequency is fortunately much lower. Paper recyclers, however, do face other paper-handling hazards that are much more common. Some cite material-handling accidents—especially those caused by improper lifting—as their most-recurring problem. 
   That’s certainly the case at the Newark Group’s Recycled Fibers Division, where back injuries are something “we go over constantly,” explains Jonathan Gold, senior vice president. Likewise, the safety committee at City Carton Co. Inc. (Iowa City, Iowa) has identified “training in proper lifting techniques to eliminate strains and pulled muscles” as one of its key concerns for 2003. City Carton employees constantly lift and dump office recycling containers or lift and stack Gaylord boxes that weigh as much as 50 pounds each even when empty, explains Andy Ockenfels, vice president of operations. “Even the healthiest employee can pull a muscle if he does it wrong,” he says.

Clutter and Combustion
Clutter is another recurring problem at paper recycling facilities, and whether it involves loose paper on the floor or paper scattered too close to machinery, it poses multiple hazards ranging from slips and falls to fire. As with improper lifting, slips and falls are a frequent concern at many paper facilities, but the threat of combustion is one of the most serious hazards. 
   Clutter contributes to this threat, especially when paper accumulates around electric motors in conveyors or other equipment, notes Bob Griffin, vice president of loss control and safety services for Willis of New Hampshire/RecycleGuard (Portsmouth, N.H.), the ISRI-sponsored property, liability, and workers’ compensation insurance program. Electric motors need to dissipate the heat they produce, he notes, but that’s not possible if paper builds up around the unit. Soon, the motor overheats and the chance of ignition rises dramatically.
   Storing scrap paper indoors also increases the chance of ignition as the natural moisture in the fiber dries out, lowering the temperature at which a fire can start, Griffin says. Of course, leaving paper out in the hot sun of summer or cold, dry air of winter does essentially the same thing, he adds. Then, if employees produce sparks by welding or torchcutting too close to this paper, the result can be a rapidly spreading fire.

Preparations and Protections 
Given all these paper-related problems, what can a recycler do to keep the workplace safe?
   Some solutions are fairly straightforward. If clutter raises the risk of slips and falls or fire, keep the production area clean. “I’m a strong believer that just because we handle scrap paper doesn’t mean we can’t take the time to operate clean, safe facilities,” says City Carton’s Andy Ockenfels. “One of the things we’re focusing on is to make sure that we’re not storing loose material on the floor where anyone’s walking.”
   Likewise, Jerry Sjogren, safety director at E.L. Harvey & Sons Inc. (Westborough, Mass.), stresses that “if you get debris in corners and all over the floors, it allows a fire to spread easily, so we try to keep the plant clean with daily diligence on housekeeping.”
   Another way to prevent fires is to establish a good “hot-work permit” policy. This will include items such as keeping all combustible items at least 3 feet away from any welding or torchcutting work—and making sure someone is watching to see how far the sparks are flying, explains RecycleGuard’s Bob Griffin.
   You should also make sure you have firefighting gear such as extinguishers nearby and maintain a “fire watch” both for a period immediately after the hot work and again later in the day, notes Sjogren.
   E.L. Harvey has also trained a roughly 20-person incipient fire brigade to handle the very earliest stages of a fire and established emergency procedures for contacting the fire department and directing the firefighters to the correct building or area that might be affected. These emergency procedures also help the plant respond to other incidents, such as accidents and injuries, Sjogren adds.
   Special safety walls can be built to keep stacked paper bales from toppling over onto employees. That’s what the Newark Group has done in places. And City Carton installed steel stacking walls throughout a new facility it built in 1999—a fact that the company’s insurer noted when writing a policy for the site, Andy Ockenfels notes. Restricting pedestrian traffic through storage areas is also a smart move.
   As a result of railcar accidents with paper bales, the rail industry now requires boxcars carrying such material to place a restraint such as steel strapping across the boxcar opening. Weyerhaeuser is also considering door-securement devices for trucks carrying paper bales, which would work primarily by making a driver pause and inspect the load before fully opening the doors, notes Sue Jones. The company has already put in place requirements on how the bales must be loaded, she adds.
   Two points are key to Weyerhaeuser’s new loading plan: First, the last row of bales—the one nearest the doors—can’t be stacked more than two bales high. That reduces the chance of a bale falling out onto a driver’s head. Also, the bales must be placed in the trailer lengthwise with the truck, which means that if the load does shift it will more likely topple toward the side walls rather than against the doors, Jones explains. The other rows can still be stacked three bales high across the trailer, she says.
   “We recognize that changing our load pattern doesn’t eliminate the risk—in fact, we just had a bale fall out from a load that actually was loaded properly—but it does minimize the risk,” Jones stresses. In that recent case, the driver was not hurt because he’d been trained to watch out for shifting loads. Indeed, Weyerhaeuser requires drivers to sign off that they know and understand the new policy. “We’re holding people firm to this,” Jones says. “If we have a supplier that continually ignores our safety requirements, we will choose not to do business with them.”

Providing Protection
In addition to training, employees also need the right protective equipment. This can range from typical items such as protective eyeglasses, gloves, and earplugs to more unique solutions.
   At the Newark Group, for instance, employees now wear special lower-back support gear to help prevent muscle strains, as well as hardhats when working around a particular roll cutter, notes Jonathan Gold.
   Likewise, E.L. Harvey added a special place to store chock blocks right on its forklifts, so there’s always a set handy when a trailer needs to be loaded or unloaded, explains Paul Degnan, the company’s operations manager.
   Guarding on equipment is also key—though sometimes such protections are removed in a mistaken effort to improve safety. Bob Griffin says he’s seen cases where machine guards were removed because workers felt they couldn’t see the dangerous areas well enough to avoid. “But removing the guard just made it easier to see your fingers being cut off,” he says bluntly. “They should have stepped back and said: ‘If there’s a problem with the guard, how do we modify the guard so that we can both see and get the job done at the same time?’”
   Emergency stop buttons and safety pull cords—either factory-installed on new machines or retrofitted to older models—also protect workers against injuries, though these systems only work if the employee can activate them. That’s why some paper recyclers are considering passive safety devices that automatically shut down equipment if an unconscious or otherwise incapacitated worker gets too close. The Safetech Body-guard System, for instance, features a belt with dual transponders that employees wear when working around potentially dangerous equipment such as conveyors that feed balers or shears. If an incapacitated worker is somehow trapped on the conveyor, his body will first pass through a sensor loop as he approaches the infeed of the baler. This automatically shuts down both the conveyor and the processing equipment—the two are wired together—and sounds an alarm, explains Richard Harris, managing director of the recycling and solid waste division of Sierra International Machinery Inc. (Keller, Texas), which is distributing the British-made Safetech systems.

Seeking Safe Behavior
   Being proactive about safety is also critical, advises Jane Erkenswick, vice president and COO of Recycling Services Inc. (Chicago). Her firm is still recovering from an “out-of-control” workers’ compensation situation that resulted from a combination of genuine and “bogus” claims, as well as a previous reactive approach to workplace safety issues, Erkenswick says.
   In response, Recycling Services has become aggressive in trying to prevent accidents and injuries before they occur. This includes working much more closely with its insurer, establishing both a safety bonus and accountability plan, and refusing to accept minor incidents that previously were tolerated. For instance, a forklift accident that only damages property now costs the driver his quarterly safety bonus (which can add up to several hundred dollars) because the incident might just as easily have caused an injury, Erkenswick says.
   The Peltz Group (Milwaukee), which recently became a division of Waste Management’s Recycle America Alliance, also decided to supplement its safety-incentive efforts with a “consequence-based program ... to weed out repeat offenders or those who don’t view safety as important,” explains Peltz’s Jeff Fielkow. In addition, Peltz launched a companywide safety committee, started site-specific safety committees at each of its seven processing plants, and hired a full-time safety manager.
   Rather than focusing on individual hazards, Peltz instead sought to change its safety culture—to make its safety efforts “a living, breathing, day-in, day-out, minute-in, minute-out program,” says Brian Fielkow, executive vice president. 
   To that end, Peltz’s new safety manager, Todd Weishoff, worked with RecycleGuard’s Bob Griffin to promote a behavior-based approach to safety focused on the causes and effects of employee actions—or lack of action. For instance, employees were asked to consider: What’s the effect of not wearing safety glasses, not only to you but to the company as a whole? 
   Peltz’s behavioral safety program was site-specific, Weishoff notes. It included meetings with small groups of employees to discuss digital photos of potential hazards within Peltz facilities, ride-alongs with drivers to explore their concerns, and the adoption of short safety meetings to start each day at many Peltz plants. The company even discussed the difficulties of obtaining or keeping workers’ comp coverage in the post-9/11 insurance market.
   “We were very matter-of-fact with employees about the insurance situation—that if there’s no workers’ comp insurance, then there are no jobs,” Weishoff says.

Impacting the Bottom Line
   Safety success is, of course, measured in many ways. All the companies discussed here reported that their efforts resulted in fewer accidents and injuries, even during periods when some of these businesses were growing and thus had far more opportunities for safety problems.
   For instance, Ben Harvey, an owner of E.L. Harvey, can talk about the potentially serious eye injuries his company knows it prevented because it had to replace safety glasses that were damaged by a strand of popped baling wire. Or foot injuries it knows were prevented because the safety shoes had to be replaced afterward.
   Many firms have also experienced significant savings in workers’ comp bills or have been able to retain insurance coverage that might otherwise have been threatened.
   Moreover, recycling paper safely is quite simply the most efficient way to do business, asserts RecycleGuard’s Bob Griffin. “Oftentimes, when you do something unsafely, you have to redo it—and you don’t get paid for doing it the second time,” he explains, concluding, “Safety training is on the threshold of becoming a recycler’s greatest asset, impacting the bottom line.” 

Watch and Learn
ISRI offers various safety videos that paper recyclers can use to train their employees. One paper processor, for instance, justifies having its entire work force—even office personnel—watch machinery-related videos because “an extra set of eyes looking in the right direction at the right time can help prevent an accident.”
   ReMA videos that paper recyclers have found especially useful include Working Safe and Smart With Balers and Working Safe and Smart Around Conveyors. The baler video, in particular, focuses on fatal accidents at several paper recycling facilities. ReMA will also soon release a new shear safety video that includes at least a few paper-related examples.
   These ReMA videos, available in English or Spanish, cost $75 each for ReMA members, $150 for nonmembers. Bulk discounts are offered for orders of 25 copies or more. Order through ISRI’s Web site at www.isri.org or call 202/737-1770.

Robert L. Reid is managing editor of Scrap.•