Working with Manufacturers to be More Sustainable in 2023
Environmental impact should be considered when making your PPE selections.
- By Zakir Abdi
- Dec 01, 2022
Over the last decade there have been many advances in safety products, particularly around hand protection, with gloves becoming more lightweight and offering more technical features, leading to greater comfort, increased dexterity and more protection for the wearer. During this time of innovation, the focus has been on the protection features offered and not on the impact on the environment. Now, as we enter a new era, the importance of sustainability to the lifecycle of a glove, combined with the protection, functionality and features offered, is growing in importance. As the world requires new sustainable consumer products, changes to material selection, manufacturing processes, new standards and the need for transparent communication and reporting start to play a key role.
Sustainable PPE—especially hand protection—requires a new way of thinking about the supply chain, the global standards, manufacturing process and packaging. Here we explore these topics to make safety sustainable.
Sustainable Safety
As the world grows more technical, the risk factors for many workers have evolved, becoming more complicated with each new task assigned. Many employees now require their hand protection to be multi-functional. Many environments now require workers to operate touchscreen technologies whilst maintaining their safety in an environment which has cut, abrasion, electrostatic dissipation or other risks. In addition to these necessary protections, consideration needs to be given to the sustainability of the materials used, the environmental impact of the manufacturing process and the shipment from factory to the final end-user as well. Employers should also ask what will happen to the glove once its lifecycle is completed.
In the future, companies considering which hand protection is required for the various risks within their work environments won’t have to consider whether a product meets their sustainable goal targets, as it will be a given. Today, however, consumers and customers are far from being assured that the hand protection they buy will meet both risk standards and the standards needed to attain their environmental or sustainability goals.
Careful Consideration
With this in mind, there are two global standards that are in use to help us understand products that have been made from recycled materials. These are the Global Recycling Standard (GRS) and the Recycled Claim Standard (RCS). These standards have been created to help with product selection and identify products that offer recycled material options. Both standards cover recycled content and chain of custody and are designed to provide purchasers with reassurance around products made from recycled materials.
This article originally appeared in the December 1, 2022 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.