The overarching legal principles that apply are due diligence and duty of care. This means that all reasonable steps must be taken to minimise the foreseeable negative impacts of our activities.
All states and territories in Australia have clear laws, regulations, standards and codes of practice that set out the environmental and safety obligations for businesses of all types.
Failure to clean up spill can result in being charged with an offence, fines being issued and possible imprisonment.
To ensure that you are able to address any spills that do occur, you are required to have appropriate equipment to respond safety to a spill incident. The most common spill response item is a spill kit.
Section 360 of the Work Health and Safety regulations state that, “A person conducting a business or undertaking at a workplace that uses, handles, generates or stores hazardous chemicals must ensure that equipment is always available at the workplace for use in an emergency.”
If a spill incident occurs and you you not have the correct equipment readily available to minimise harm caused by the spill you can be fined fro $6,000 to $30,000. Standard onsite spill kits cost between $300 and $500.
Chemical spills in the workplace are both a workplace safety issue and an environment protection issue. As such a spill incident can cause fines to be issued by both EPA and SafeWork.
An oil spill in a walkway is a slip hazard that can cause serious damage. That same spill next to a stormwater drain is and environmental danger. Failure to take reasonable steps to contain and clean up this workplace danger a range of fines to be issued from various regulators.
Regardless of the jurisdiction, the spill can be easily and safety cleaned up with a spill response kit.
A spill can financially effect everybody involved in a variety of ways as a spill in Queensland showed.
In the course of loading an insecticide called endosulfan onto a truck at a Queensland transport company, a forklift driver pierced a drum causing 20 litres of the chemical to spill onto the ground. A site employee hosed the chemical down a drain that led to a local watercourse resulting in a serious fish kill.
The two employees involved and the company were successfully prosecuted.
The forklift driver was fined $2,800, plus $6,000 in investigation costs.
The site employee was fined $11,000, plus $10,000 investigation costs.
The company was fined $25,000, plus $6,000 in investigation costs.
In addition to these costs, a statutory notice to the transport company was issued that required them to spend more than $125,000 to remove contaminated sediment and remediate to contaminated waterway.
That is over $180,000.
These amounts do not include court costs or legal costs incurred by the defendants.
A $100 spill kit and 20 minutes training could have easily avoided the financial consequences.
Spill kits can easily become empty if there is no documented and scheduled inspection regime. Section 362 of the Work Health and Safety regulations state, “A person conducting a business or undertaking at the workplace must ensure that the safety equipment is provided, maintained and readily accessible to persons at the workplace.”
Failure to have the correct equipment in place can result in fines of up to $30,000 being applied. Spill Station has a complete spill kit maintenance and restock service to ensure you are meeting your obligations and exercising due diligence.
Today we understand the importance of maintaining a safe, healthy and environmentally responsible workplace. When an organisation is engaging in activity that poses a risk to or causes actual damage to people or the environment there can be significant community and media blowback. Conversely when a company is able to show that it conducts itself in a safe and responsible manner it can serve to enhance the corporate reputation of the organisation.
By having the correct spill clean up equipment available, you can help your team to effectively respond to and minimise the negative outcomes of a spill on your company’s reputation.
Section 363 (2) of the Work Health and Safety regulations states that, “The person must ensure that sufficient information, training and instruction is given to a person who operates, tests, maintains or
decommissions a system used at a workplace for the use, handling or storage of hazardous chemicals for the activity to be carried out safely.” Failure to ensure that staff have had training in how to use spill response equipment may result in a fine of up to $30,000.
In addition to the mandatory laws and regulations we are subject to, many companies choose to imbed the need for spill control equipment through internal policies as well as ISO14001 and ISO45001. These management systems create a structure and process for monitoring and improving safety and environmental performance.
Spill kits, spill pallets, safety showers and spill response training are just a few measures that can be implemented on site to improve safety and environment outcomes.
According to AS4123.7, yellow bins are designated for clinical waste including urine and blood soaked dressings. It also states that red bins are for radioactive waste and blue bins are for office paper recycling. To avoid the obvious problems and direct conflict caused by coloured bins, a lime green bin is an excellent alternative to a yellow bin as a lime green bin body is not in conflict Australian Standards and will help to reduce confusion.
We are all custodians of the land we live and work on and we will one day pass on to our children. We have a responsibility and duty to the generations to come to leave our part of the world in better condition than we found it.
By dealing with spills as they occur and preventing them from impacting the environment in an uncontrolled way we can make a real difference one spill at a time.