A Clutter-Free Building Is a Safe and Compliant Building
Are you the kind of person who despises clutter? If so, your hands might start twitching when a family member sets something down and walks away. You might get the sweats thinking about the start of garage sale season, thanks to a spouse who can’t get enough good bargains. Well, clutter in the home is one thing. It is an entirely different matter in the workplace.
A clutter-free building is a safe and compliant building. That is why OSHA is such a stickler about clutter. Section 1910 of the federal regulations addresses workplace clutter on a number of different levels. Section 1910.22(a)(1) explicitly states:
“All places of employment, passageways, storerooms, service rooms, and walking-working surfaces are kept in a clean, orderly, and sanitary condition.”
Companies are required by law to always maintain a safe work environment. Given how hazardous clutter can be, it follows that maintaining a safe work environment also means minimizing clutter as much as possible. To that end, we have some helpful tips you and your staff might be able to implement in your workplace.
1. Minimize Furniture
Starting with the office, a good way to reduce clatter is to minimize the amount of furniture in the space. If you do not need three desks, get rid of one of them. Put those extra shelves and filing cabinets into storage for now. Your team isn’t using them right now anyway.
Out on the production of floor, excess furniture often manifests itself as unused work tables, benches, chairs, etc. Storage cabinets and shelves can also get in the way.
2. Keep Walkways Clean
Clutter has this annoying habit of finding its way into walkways. That makes it especially dangerous. Anything in a walkway becomes a tripping hazard. It becomes an obstruction to safe passage in the event of an emergency. So if nothing else from this post helps you, at least make the effort to clean out walkways and keep them clean.
Walkways include hallways, doorways, staircases, and any aisles on the production floor or in the warehouse used to move from one space to the next. According to OSHA regulations, all these walkways have to remained clear of obstructions. OSHA is not afraid to fine businesses that cannot seem to keep them clear.
3. Don’t Let Waste Accumulate
A third thing your company can do is make a point of not letting waste accumulate. The maintenance team should be sweeping through your building on a regular basis to remove waste as soon as it is found. This includes your scrap plastic.
As an expert in plastic recycling, we know how easy it is to let scrap plastic stack up on empty floor space. Unfortunately, over time, a small stack can become a large mountain of clutter just waiting to cause problems.
We might be able to take that scrap plastic off your hands. Our model of industrial plastic recycling allows us to buy certain types of plastic waste and turn it into a product known as regrind. We sell the regrind to manufacturers who combine it with new material to make end products.
Any amount of clutter in the workplace introduces unnecessary risk. By its definition, clutter is excess. It doesn’t have to be in your workplace. However, maintaining a clutter-free workplace requires concerted effort from everyone. Management and staff have to work together to ensure that clutter doesn’t find a foothold.
If we can help eliminate clutter by purchasing your scrap plastic, do not hesitate to contact us. Remember that a clutter-free building is a safe and compliant building.