Two Years Accident Free in St. Louis
A safe work environment is a right, but it’s one that is only earned with the participation of everyone from management to floor supervisor, sorter to baler. That is why at our St. Louis plant, the fact that we have reached 2 years accident free is less a milestone, and more a remarkable, hard-won testament to all of us and our dedicated, diligent efforts as a team.
It’s no secret that here at Quincy Recycle, safety is our top priority. You see safety as a cornerstone throughout our core values. You ask any employee here, and they will tell you about their dedication to maintaining a work environment in which we can all feel safe and thrive. We are stringent in our procedures, because we know that we all have lives and loved ones outside of our facility that we want to see at the end of a long hard day.
After we identified the “Five Deadlies”, and determined various procedures to ensure safety throughout our facilities, our team never wavered. We were able to implement Lock Out/Tag Out procedures, Fire & Emergency procedures, Glad Hand Locks, Safe Stacking, and Operator Awareness, all thanks to your willingness and tenacity. These procedures go far in ensuring a safe work environment for you, for me, for all of us.
For us though, it’s more than merely pushing out memos or memorizing bullet points on a safety poster. For us, safety is a way of life. It’s double-checking, even if you’re sure the job is done. It’s paying extra attention, even when you’re tired. It’s checking in and coordinating efforts as a team, even if working alone would be less work. After the meeting when we identified our “Five Deadlies”, we made sure to engage our teams with the new information; now we live out every day what they mean. Being able to identify these daily and be constantly thinking about them has helped ensure a safer workplace.
These standards would have been impossible to define, however, were it not for the invaluable feedback of our workforce. So many of you have been working in this industry for years. You are the ones on the frontlines. You are the ones who have to take what we conceptualize and put it into practice. We are indebted to you, your diligence, and your commitment to contribute practical input based on experience so that we can all benefit from efficient and safe improvements.
Randy Bluhm, Operations manager, had this to say of his intrepid team: “At the end of the day, we have been successful in reaching this milestone because we have a team who believes in and is committed to working safely. They want to go home to their families the exact same way they came to work. They have worked in a recycling environment for many years now and are aware of the safety issues in our industry. When we celebrated our two-year milestone, the comment I heard most was ‘It’s just what we do.’ They are committed to safety, tenacious in what they do, and compete to win, every day.”
Congratulations to you and to us all for reaching this exciting achievement. It was through every one of your efforts, big and small, that this was made a reality. May our dedication to safety continue to thrive, and here’s to 3 years!