Appliance recycling firm fined after worker injured

Date:

15 June 2011

Release No:

HSE/EM/199/11

A worker was injured by a falling stack of cookers and washing machines at one of the UK's largest electrical equipment recycle firms.

Environcom England Ltd recycles waste electrical equipment for some of the biggest electrical retailers in the country, but Grantham Magistrates' Court heard how a Polish agency worker suffered bruising to his back and chest after an unsafe stack of appliances fell on him.

When the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated the incident at the firm's processing plant at Spittlegate Level, Grantham, that happened on 15 September 2009 it discovered appliances were piled five or six high, making the stacks unstable.

The incident was reported to HSE in late November but when an inspector visited the site on 3 December to investigate the incident, appliances were still stacked dangerously high. A Prohibition Notice was served immediately to prevent unsafe stacking.

Environcom England Ltd, of Hardman Street, Spinningfields, Manchester, pleaded guilty to two counts of breaching 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. They were today fined £7,000 for the offence on 15 September and £10,000 for the further offence on 3 December. The firm was also ordered to pay full costs of £5,915.20p.

HSE inspector Judith McNulty-Green said:

"The worker was extremely fortunate not to have been more seriously hurt and the company could have done so many things to prevent his injuries.

"Heavy machines like cookers and washers should never have been stacked so high. If they had been stacked on their side it would have provided a broader and more stable base and stacking them against a wall would also have given much more stability.

"If the goods were kept behind a barrier or in a container, a collapse like this would not have injured anyone. Better still they could have co-ordinated delivery of goods better so the stacks did not build up in the first place.

"The range of simple, common sense measures that could have been taken to prevent heavy stacks of machine toppling over just goes to underline what basic mistakes Environcom made - its failures and this sentence should be a warning to other recycling firms to take safety seriously."

Notes to editors

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice; promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice; and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk
2. Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states: "It shall be the duty of every employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way as to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that persons not in his employment who may be affected thereby are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety."

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