The ESA has today (1st May 2025), published its first update for 2025 to its long-running Situational Awareness campaign, which provides free-to-use training materials to address common risks faced by people working in the recycling and waste management sector.
The campaign, which has been running since 2023, provides short films, posters and “huddle cards” (designed to facilitate team meetings) which offer training on how to mitigate a range of commons risks found across the recycling and waste management sector – from people driving on pavements to overtake collection vehicles; to working with bin lifters and using mobile devices while driving.
Today’s update to the campaign adds two new topics aimed at those who drive vehicles for the sector – particularly light and heavy goods vehicles:
Avoiding Bridge Strikes – aimed at drivers of large vehicles to help avoid incidents where a vehicle, its load or equipment collides with a bridge, often where roads pass under railways. Network Rail reports there are an average of five bridge strikes a day across the UK and the training materials provide advice for drivers to follow to reduce this risk of this happening.
Safely manoeuvring light goods vehicles (LGVs) – which is designed for all vehicle drivers, particularly single-manned Large Goods Vehicle (LGV) operators who face restricted visibility. The campaign stresses the importance of taking the time to “Get out and Look (GOAL)” to assess surroundings when faced with risks like blind spots or the absence of a reversing assistant.
Any organisation who would like to view, download and use the Situational Awareness training materials for free can now access the whole collection from the ESA’s campaigns portal here – click on situational awareness to see the whole library of materials, which can be downloaded as desired.
ESA Policy Advisor, Stephen Freeland, said: “Achieving and promoting the highest industry standards is a strategic priority for the ESA and in no area is this more important than ensuring the safety of everyone working in our industry, as well as the communities they serve. Today, we have added to our successful Situational Awareness campaign with ready-made training materials for use by all in our sector – not just ESA members – which address common risks that arise in the day-to-day operation of goods vehicles across the sector.”
