Culture
Just a Bit of a Stretch: How Louisville Cut Garbage Collector Injuries in Half
Bend over, touch your toes, miss fewer days of work.
When you’re hopping on and off a truck, loading garbage from 100,000 homes a week, injuries seem almost inevitable—but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to prevent them. Just ask Louisville, Kentucky, whose public works department has cut its injury rate in half over the last two years.
In January 2012, the department’s rate of OSHA recordable injuries—serious injuries that keep employees away from work, limit their duties, or worse—was 31 percent, much higher than public works departments in comparable cities like Nashville or Charlotte. By January 2014, however, that rate has plunged to below 15 percent. How did they do it? Well, it starts with adding a stretching regimen.