Sustainability in the Workplace
Sustainable organizations strive to balance the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit to achieve long-term success and viability. This means that organizations cannot be sustainable without protecting the safety, health, and welfare of their most vital resource: workers. Sustainability is not just about what is done, but how it gets done. It is a mindset that requires leadership; not settling for second best in any aspect of operations; setting and achieving goals beyond regulatory compliance.
Organizations of all sizes across the country and around the world have embraced this mindset as a way to showcase their values, measure impacts and outcomes, and increase their competitive advantage. However, workplace safety and health is often underemphasized, or overlooked completely. Integrating safety and health into sustainability provides an opportunity to better protect workers and achieve a truly sustainable organization.
Learn more about the connection between occupational safety and health and sustainability here.
Latest from OSHA
Sustainability White Paper Released
This paper highlights the importance of including worker safety and health in the growing movement toward sustainability and corporate responsibility. Sustainability provides a platform for reimagining and identifying innovative approaches for protecting workers by:
- Creating new partnerships to advance integrated OSH and sustainability activities;
- Enhancing interdisciplinary training and education for workers, the OSH community, and business professionals;
- Measuring the impact of safety and health performance on business outcomes;
- Recognizing employers that successfully integrate OSH into sustainability efforts; and
- Improving access to data on safety and health for sustainability reporting.
Sustainability Spotlight
Center for Safety & Health Sustainability
CSHS provides over 100,000 occupational safety and health professionals in over 70 countries with a stronger voice in shaping sustainability policies.
Officially launched in 2011, the Center for Safety & Health Sustainability, a joint effort of safety and health professional organizations in the US, Canada, and the UK, is driven by the strong belief that an organization cannot be sustainable if it does not ensure safe and healthful conditions for its workers and contractors.
Pro Recycling Group
Pro Recycling Group consists of 3 Divisions: Pro Baler Services, Interwest Paper and Pro Polymers, and employs 42 workers in facilities in Utah.
Pro Recycling Group, a small business conglomerate out of South Salt Lake City, Utah, recognizes the value that investing in workplace safety and health can have. With organizational values rooted in the idea of the triple bottom line - People, Planet, Profit - Pro Recycling Group has long been committed to continuous improvement for identifying waste solutions and opportunities for community engagement. More recently, with an eye toward business growth, they have begun to think about worker safety and health in much the same way - an opportunity for innovation and differentiation.