SWANA announces Safety Award winners

The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), Silver Spring, Maryland, has announced that it’s Safety Committee has selected its 2019 SWANA Safety Award recipients. According to SWANA, these awards recognize those who have demonstrated a profound commitment to improving employee safety through communication, best practices, training and policies. The recipients, which were chosen by the SWANA Safety Committee.

The Best Safety Innovation Award was given to the city of San Antonio’s Solid Waste Management Department for fully implementing a safety management system (SMS) that “challenged convention, created synergies and engaged employees at all levels and functions,” according to SWANA. These efforts reduced accidents by 47 percent and injuries by 50 percent, with a lost workday rate reduction of 28 percent.

“The men and women of the city of San Antonio’s Solid Waste Management Department serve more than 358,000 households weekly and are routinely faced with high-risk conditions,” Walter Barrett, solid waste manager for the city of San Antonio’s Solid Waste Management Department, says. “Through the implementation of a safety management system, the department strives to mitigate and eliminate these risks and provide a safer work environment that ensures our employees go home to their families in the same condition as when they arrived at work. Their commitment to safety guided us on the journey to obtaining an ISO 45001 Safety Certification and making San Antonio the first municipality in the world to achieve this accomplishment. [We wanted to give] our thanks to SWANA for its role in this challenge and to our entire team whose dedication and innovation propels the continual improvement in achieving a sustained reduction in accidents and injuries.”

The Biggest Safety Improvement Award was awarded to Lakeshore Recycling Systems (LRS) for continued success in increasing transparency and two-way communication among employees and management to reduce incidents by over 50 percent from the previous year. LRS is headquartered in Morton Grove, Illinois, and serves the Chicago area with more than 720 full time employees.

“Lakeshore is proud to be recognized by SWANA for our continued dedication to the ‘live safety’ philosophy,” says John Sliwicki, vice president of risk management at Lakeshore Recycling Systems and safety ambassador of SWANA’s Illinois chapter. “This belief is at the heart of our core values and guides our decision-making at every level. Our efforts and commitment have finally started to be demonstrated in the overall reduction of incidents and claim spend. These metrics provide further support that our culture is blossoming, and we are headed in the right direction.”

SWANA also gave an honorable mention to the Casper Regional Landfill in Casper, Wyoming, for the operators’ innovation and improvement in safety.

The winners of the SWANA Safety Awards will be recognized at Wastecon in Phoenix, Arizona.

Autocar,Hagerstown, Indiana; New Way, Scranton, Iowa; Otto, Charlotte, North Carolina; and Preco, Lenexa, Kansas, sponsored this year’s SWANA Safety Awards.

For more information on SWANA’s safety programs, visit swana.org/safety.