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When the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Manufacturing Sector took on responsibility for the waste and recycling industry a few years ago, it commissioned a report into its safety record. Paul Harvey, the HSE's principal inspector for waste and recycling, says: "We knew that the HSE annual statistics repeatedly showed the recycling industry to be the most lethal industry group within the UK. However, that group is just part of the much wider industry and excluded activities such as refuse collection,  processing and disposal, composting and recycling." The figures, published in 2004, still represent the most accurate data available specifically covering the waste industry (see right). The results were worrying:

• Overall accident rates in the waste industry is estimated at 2,500 per 100,000 workers in 2001/02 - five times the national average of 559 per 100,000 workers.
• The fatal accident rate was around 10 per 100,000 - 10 times the national rate.
• Major injury accident rates were estimated to be 330 per 100,000 workers - more than three times the national rate of 101 per 100,000.

The report also found that:

• 160,000 workers are employed in the UK waste industry, 120,000 of them in the private sector. Accurate figures have yet to be collated for the public sector, but it is estimated that there are currently up to 45,000 waste workers in the public sector.
• The waste industry is composed primarily of small  and medium enterprises (SMEs). There are also about 2,000 skip-hire companies in the UK, which are likely to employ at least 4,000 workers.
• The number of accidents reported by local authorities has been falling since 1997, while the accident rate in the private sector has increased, albeit to a smaller extent. This may be a result of waste operations and workers transferring from the public to the private sector following compulsory competitive tendering.

Harvey is optimistic about the report's findings: "This work has given us the evidence upon which to draw up our strategy for the coming years. "This is a massive industry and one which will only grow with the increasing demand to increase recycling," he points out. "The challenge is to ensure that industry growth does not come at the expense of accidents." An HSE spokesman says it is working with local authorities to reduce waste-related accidents in the public sector. This project has been running for almost two years it has 13 months left to run before its strategy is reviewed.

The figuresin the report Mapping Health and Safety Standards in the UK Waste Industry are approximations because 'waste' is not treated as a separate industry in the Standard Industry Classifications (SIC): water and sewage are also included. Also, the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (Riddor) reporting system records refuse collection but excludes recycling and sorting. The 2004 report warns: "This causes problems in identifying in sufficient detail the areas to be targeted for intervention." Data gathering should become easier from 2008 when revised industry classifications (SIC 2007) come into effect.

Waste will be broken down into water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities. This means one of the most important recommendations of the HSE report will be acted upon, hopefully resulting in "improved intelligence for targeting risk controls". In an industry where the number of fatalities and accidents is unacceptably high this is clearly a good thing, but the report warns: "As the industry changes and moves towards greater recycling, their significance in delivering data is likely to increase."