Vol. XIII No. 5
September / October 2019
Serving Soil, Mulch, Compost & Wood Pellet Producers www.SoilandMulchProducerNews.com
NEWS
Training is Critical to Safety at Mulching Yards
W
orkplace injury reports from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) can serve as gruesome reminders about how dangerous grinders and other mulching facility equipment can be when proper safety precautions aren’t utilized. In March 2018, an employee at a Missouri lumber company was killed while operating a hog grinder used to make mulch out of lumber scrap. According to OSHA, the worker fell into the chute of the grinder and was pulverized by the blades of the grinder. During the same month, a worker at a Florida landfill died of head trauma while clearing a jam from a trommel system. OSHA said he got caught in the conveyor system and was dumped into a pile located 150 feet from the equipment. The incident investigation revealed that past practices involved the clearing of jams while the machine was in operation. It was speculated that the employee followed that practice during the accident. In April 2017 an employee at a landscape waste yard in Ohio was killed after getting off of the skid steer track loader he was operating and was pinned between his loader and a frontend loader that was backing up while loading material into a tub grinder. In June 2017, a worker at an Alabama lumber supply yard was cleaning around a conveyor belt that fed wood waste trimmings to a horizontal wood grinder. As he cleaned the conveyor belt, his right arm was caught between the tail pulley and belt of the long-inclined belt conveyor, causing multiple fractures to his right arm. As a report from Beltsville, Md. shows, safety needs to be practiced away from mulching operations as well. In April 2016, an employee was killed while adjusting the mulch flow on a mulch blower truck. After realizing the controls were not adjusting the mulch flow to where it needed to be, OSHA said, he climbed a ladder located on the back of the mulch truck, then jumped into the back of the truck and started to move the mulch into the auger with a pitchfork.
By Ken McEntee
He was caught by and pulled into the stir stick of a rotating auger and died of traumatic injuries that resulted when he was wrapped around the stir stick. In the opinion of Trey Tyre, vice president of operations and safety director for Waupaca Northwoods, Waupaka, Wisc., it unfortunately, sometimes takes an accident for the importance of safety to become a vital issue. “I would say the majority of managers and companies in our industry do not place enough time and resources towards building a positive safety culture,” he said. “I had to learn some of these lessons the hard way. My goal going forward is to provide our managers and employees with the necessary training and tools so that they can do things the correct way from the start.” Tyre and other mulch producers contacted for this article said worker safety is the top priority at their operations. “There are a lot of safety slogans out there, like “safety is number one,” or “safety first,” but it is absolutely our company’s top priority,” Tyre said. “Saying it doesn’t make it so. However, we believe in daily action to back up our beliefs. Without a doubt, our employees are our most important assets and most critical to a successful operation. Equipment and inventory, while it usually has negative financial impacts, can be
repaired or replaced. Our company operates off of some simple mutual expectations. These core beliefs include items such as teamwork and accountability, two-way communication, quality output and proactive performance. At the very top of that list is safety and housekeeping.” Ke n d a l l C a s o n , g e n e r a l m a n ag e r, Landscapers Pride, New Waverly, Tex., said a safe workplace not only reduces costs, but also provides a better work environment for employees. “We’re a family-oriented company,” Cason said. “We want our employees to be safe, happy and taken care of.” Landscapers Pride has instituted a monthly reward system that incentivizes workers to adhere to its safety program, Cason said. “For each month without a safety incident, workers are rewarded with a catered lunch and an employee of the month receives a bonus and preferred parking,” he said. Tyre said Waupaca Northwoods addresses worker safety by implementing written policy, guidelines and a safety protocol “OSHA sets overall regulatory guidelines, but we view OSHA requirements as the bare minimum,” he said. “Our policies and procedures are written with a higher and more detailed expectation than OSHA standards.” Continued on page 3