Saturday, January 24, 2009

Cement Companies Follow Up On Agenda for Action

Cement Companies Follow Up On Agenda for Action

Ensuring healthy and safe working conditions for employees and contractors is a fundamental key to corporate social responsibility, and is one of the most important issues for the cement industry. CSI members recognize that more attention should be paid to this area across the whole industry and are committed to playing a full part in that process.

(PRWEB) February 9, 2005

Ensuring healthy and safe working conditions for employees and contractors is a fundamental key to corporate social responsibility, and is one of the most important issues for the cement industry. CSI members recognize that more attention should be paid to this area across the whole industry and are committed to playing a full part in that process.

Cement is one of the most widely used substances on earth. Making cement is an energy and resource intensive process with both local and global environmental, health and safety impacts.

Recognizing these facts, several cement companies, initiated the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) as a member-sponsored program of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Currently, sixteen cement companies, who together represent more that half the worldwide industry outside of China, sponsor the Initiative.

CSI Companies are already hugely committed to improvement in safety performance in their companies, and very significant improvements are already being achieved.

As promised under the Agenda for Action, the CSI Task Force on Employee Health & Safety has now drafted these Examples of Good Practice. This guideline document outlines how the management of both health and safety can and should be achieved, without being over-prescriptive.

It gives practical guidance on good practice in safety procedures in the cement industry based on experience and focused on the identified fatality and injury causes. It also gives parallel employee health guidelines, again focused on the most common health concerns, in particular relating to the increasingly common use of alternate fuels.

Most CSI Companies have already implemented such guidelines, though a need has been identified to disseminate these to the wider industry and external stakeholders.

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