Tag: Dumpster Injuries

Cut the Risk and Improve Safety When It Comes to Your Trash Room

Save Money and Make Your Workers Happy By Making Their Job Easier on Them and Your Insurance Cheaper.
Save Money and Make Your Workers Happy By Making Their Job Easier on Them and Your Insurance Cheaper.

Just as you can lower your car insurance by driving a safer car and avoiding accidents, you can lower your workers comp premiums with tools and strategies to improve dumpster safety. Besides the nightmare scenario of a dumpster tipping over and injuring an employee, your team faces an ongoing risk of repetitive stress and muscle injuries related to moving dumpsters.

How a Dumpster Pusher Can Help

When your employees move a dumpster or waste container, are they using manual force to steer and push it? Even on wheels, it takes a physical exertion that exceeds what the human body can comfortably perform. Both instantaneous injuries and long-term, built-up musculoskeletal disorders can put your worker on paid leave and increase workers comp insurance costs.

An automated dumpster pusher is the best way to improve trash room safety:

• Lower your Experience Modification Rating (EMR or E-Mod)

• Reduce workers compensation insurance premiums

• Keep your employees healthy and avoid costly time off

• Avoid high employee turnover and the associated loss of productivity

• Double the efficiency of trash room duties

• Manage the trash room in less time and/or with fewer employees

• Improve cleanliness and customer satisfaction at multi-family properties, retail, hospitality, etc.

The #1 Solution for the Biggest Injury Risk

Any business with a trash room or the need to move dumpsters can benefit from using a motorized dumpster pusher. In particular, rental properties benefit from using the WasteCaddy because trash-related injuries are the #1 risk for worker injury.

Tackle the trash room, and you can tackle your workers comp premiums. Contact DJ Products for a quote or demo of our WasteCaddy dumpster pusher.

What Isn’t Safe to Throw Away in Your Dumpster?

What Isn't Safe to Throw Away in Your Dumpster?
What Isn’t Safe to Throw Away in Your Dumpster?

Some things shouldn’t be thrown away because recycling them is so easy—like aluminum cans. Other things truly cannot be thrown away because of laws, regulations, or a company’s environmental ethics. If your organization has not established what items are unacceptable for the dumpster, then it’s time to make a list.

At DJ Products, we’re often stressing the importance of safety for employees who use and maneuver dumpsters with our WasteCaddy dumpster mover. It’s also important to be safe about what items go into the dumpster, in terms of both worker injury and eco-friendly practices.

Common Items That You Can’t Throw Away in a Dumpster

Prohibited items can vary depending on state and local laws or the rules of your trash collection service. Whether prohibited or not, you should think twice about these kinds of items:

• Items with environmental hazards: computers, electronics, rechargeable batteries, appliances that contain refrigerant such as mini fridges and window air conditioners, CFL light bulbs and other items containing mercury.

• Flammable items: gasoline, butane, and other fuels, oil and lubricants, and liquids such as paint, varnish, and wood stain.

• Other dangerous materials: medical supplies such as syringes, sharps, and scalpels. For dangerous items like broken glass and ceramics, use heavy paper bags to prevent injury.

• Check with your city or collection company: construction and demolition waste including dirt, rock, concrete, drywall, roofing shingles, etc.

More About Dumpster Safety

Many of our clients purchase a WasteCaddy dumpster mover after discovering that an alarming percentage of worker compensation claims are related to dumpster duty. Contact us at DJ Products or read more about our WasteCaddy dumpster mover and bin pullers.

Tips for Preventing Injuries in the Workplace – Look at the Trash Room First

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Trash Room Injuries

Do you associate workplace injuries with assembly lines and other complex equipment? You might be surprised to learn that many of them occur in the relatively quiet trash room.

According to data from the Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index, these five injuries account for nearly 75 percent of the overall cost burden:

1. Overexertion

The top category includes injuries caused by pushing, pulling and other activities that cause undue stress on muscles and joints. Manually transporting dumpsters weighing hundreds or thousands of pounds can easily result in these types of injuries.

2. Falling

Employees are vulnerable to falling while moving dumpsters up and down inclines or across treacherous surfaces such as snow and ice.

3. Bodily Reaction

This category includes injuries such as getting fingers and hands caught in dumpster lids or stumbling and banging your head against the side.

4. Falling to a Lower Level

While technically this doesn’t usually apply to trash rooms, an employee can become seriously injured by a fall incurred by climbing into a dumpster.

5. Struck by Object

Unwieldy dumpsters can quickly get away from employees, striking them or causing them to be pinned against a wall or other obstacle.

Safeguard Employees with a Dumpster Mover from DJ Products

A dumpster mover like the WasteCaddyLite, our most popular product, eliminates many of the risk factors for these common injuries.

  • A single employee can transport dumpsters weighing up to 2,000 pounds.
  • Dumpster movers travel securely on inclines as well as rough or slippery surfaces.
  • Our movers are ergonomically designed to prevent repetitive motion injuries.

Call 800.686.2651 to learn more about our full line of movers.