Recycling Industry – cardboard storage injury

A recycling company has been fined £160,000 for a cardboard storage injury arising from a bale crush event. The Smethwick-based firm, Arrow Recycling,  has been fined after its failure to safely stack cardboard bales led to a worker being crushed under more than a third of a tonne of the material and being placed in a coma for ten days. The forty-nine-year-old employee (PA) was left fighting for his life when an unstable stack of cardboard bales, weighing around 400kg, tumbled over and landed on him as he was carrying out work at the firm’s recycling site in April 2016. PA suffered a cracked skull and a brain haemorrhage.

Arrow Recycling pleaded guilty to breaching reg 10(4) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 and was sentenced at Wolverhampton Magistrates’ last week. The company was fined £160,000 and also ordered to pay £2,917 in costs.