Loading a bin safely

What makes a manual task hazardous

Safe Work Australia counts a task as hazardous when it means lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling, carrying, or otherwise moving, holding or restraining a person, animal or thing, and it involves one or more of these:

• “repetitive movement
• repetitive or sustained force
• high or sudden force
• sustained or awkward postures
• exposure to vibration.”

Safe Work Australia, Lifting, pushing and pulling

SafeWork NSW puts numbers on two of those words. Repetitive means a movement or force done more than twice a minute; a sustained posture is one held for more than 30 seconds at a time. Sudden force is a rapid rise or fall in effort, such as a jarring, jerky or unexpected movement.

Safe Work Australia names four places the hazard can come from: the tasks and how they are done, how the work is designed and managed, the tools, equipment and objects being handled, and the physical work environment. High force, SafeWork NSW explains, is what happens when large loads, relative to the part of the body doing the work, are put on muscles and other tissues.

The harm these tasks do has a name: musculoskeletal disorders, an injury or disease of the muscles, bones, joints and connective tissues. Safe Work Australia says they can come on slowly, through wear and tear, or suddenly, for example by “handling a load that shifts position”. In NSW, hazardous manual tasks are one of the main causes of them.

The order regulators work in

WorkSafe Tasmania sets out, for a business at a workplace, the order in which these risks are to be tackled:

1. First: remove the taskAlways aim to take the hazardous manual task away altogether. SafeWork NSW calls eliminating the risk the most effective control.
2. Then: change the load or the toolsWhere removing it is not reasonably practicable, reduce the risk, for example by swapping heavy bags for smaller, lighter ones, or by using mechanical lifting trolleys or devices.
3. Then: change how the work is doneIf risk remains, use administrative controls such as rotating jobs and safe work procedures, so far as is reasonably practicable.
4. Last: protective equipmentWhatever risk is left is minimised with suitable personal protective equipment.

Technique sits low on that list. WorkSafe Queensland says training in lifting techniques must not be the only or main way of controlling the risk.

Workplace examples, read for a skip

WorkSafe Victoria lists control measures for particular kinds of workplace. None was written for a skip at home, so the table keeps each one with the workplace it was written for.

When someone is paid to help

If a business does the loading for you, its workers are at work. In NSW, SafeWork NSW says employers and businesses must manage the health and safety risks of musculoskeletal disorders from hazardous manual tasks, and must consult the workers affected.

Safe Work Australia asks businesses to think about workers who may be more at risk, giving an inexperienced worker or one with a previous injury as examples.

The shape of the load

For a skip standing in a public place under its permit, the City of Melbourne says what is loaded must not change the skip’s outside shape or size, and the road must be kept free of debris and spillage. That is Melbourne’s condition, not a national one, and it is the line drawn across the top of every band on this site.

Some things should not be in the load at all. Band 4 covers the drop-off programs for chemicals, batteries and gas bottles, and band 6 follows the full skip to the levies and tip charges at the other end.