WA recycling company fined over loss of toes

Recycla-Plas in Western Australia has been fined $50,000 over an incident that resulted in the amputation of two of a 15-year-old employee’s toes.

The company was found guilty of failing to provide a safe workplace and, by that failure, causing serious harm to a worker and was fined in the Midland Magistrates Court.

In 2006, the young employee was using a baling machine where product was placed in one end, compressed by a hydraulic ram, baled, then ejected from the other end. The machine had input, side and output doors, which each had controls that prevented certain actions of the machine to disengage when they were open.

Employees had been instructed to close the side door as far as possible after strapping the bale, and once the bale was ejected, to close the door fully before retracting the ram.

Just before the incident, another employee was at the output end of the machine removing a bale. The employee who was injured was standing by the side door while the ram was retracted, but the side door had not been closed. As the ram retracted past the side door, the man’s foot was crushed, resulting in two toes needing to be surgically amputated.

WorkSafe WA Commissioner Nina Lyhne said that the case was an example of machinery not being adequately guarded and safe work practices not being observed: “Anyone in control of a workplace containing machinery with hazardous moving parts needs to ensure that those moving parts are safely guarded.

“Guarding of the moving parts of machinery is still one of the easiest and most obvious means of minimising the risk of injury to machinery operators, and I strongly urge employers in workplaces with machinery to ensure that it is safe to operate.

“It is also up to the employer to ensure that workers observe the safe work practices that are in place. However, in this case, it would have been better to ensure that the machine was safe to operate in the first place.

“After this incident, the machine was fitted with an interlock switch - similar to those on the input and output doors - to prevent the ram from retracting when the side door was open but still allowing it to move forward to eject a bale.

“This modification only cost around $1700, and could have prevented the worker from losing two toes if it had been done earlier.”