Could climate change lay waste a safer, healthier world of work?

It’s a real honour for me to be asked to moderate a keynote panel session on ‘Protecting human health’ at ISWA World Congress 2026, in November. This is especially true with it being staged in London, the first time in more than three decades this global event has been hosted in the UK.

As a health and safety professional, I feel a pressing responsibility to be there, as well as pride, because the waste and recycling sector continues to be one of the most dangerous industries worldwide.

In the United States, workers in the sector are dying due to their work at an appalling rate of 37.4 per 100,000 employees^{Bureau of Labor Statistics}. The equivalent rate in Great Britain is 5.47^{UK Health and Safety Executive}, but that is 10 to 15 times higher than the national all-industry average. In Europe, nearly one million waste workers face high accident, illness and climate-related risks, such as heat waves^{European Federation of Public Service Unions}.

According to the World Bank, around 18 million people in the world work in urban waste management, with an estimated 40 per cent operating outside formal employment, where there is little in the way of safety standards and mortality tracking.

The chief causes of these deaths in the global waste sector are moving vehicles, machinery and entrapment and fires and explosions, which are increasingly caused by improperly discarded lithium-ion batteries, pressurised gas cylinders and volatile materials posing lethal risks at recycling and treatment facilities.

If the challenges weren’t already great enough, climate change is further driving up deaths and injuries in waste and recycling, compounding the dangers of an already hazardous industry. With waste management sending workers out to do prolonged, physically demanding outdoor labour at the front lines of shifting climates, the potential for harm is greatly increased.

I might refer you at this point to an excellent blog from IOSH’s Genis Fernandes on how the global drive to be greener isn’t necessarily creating a safer planet.

Hostile environment

Rising global temperatures and prolonged heatwaves are posing an immediate, fatal threat to many outdoor municipal workers:

• a rising death toll: reports the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) have highlighted how heat-related workplace fatalities have increased by 42 per cent across Europe since 2000. Deeply disturbing stories of individual workers, such as street cleaners, dying from extreme heat regularly make the alarming statistics real
• according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), excessive temperatures have been the primary driver behind a global surge in chronic kidney disease, heat exhaustion and heat stroke among outdoor waste management workers
• studies have shown how climate change acts as an “injury multiplier”, identifying a correlation between rising heat indexes and spikes in acute physical injuries. Physical exhaustion, heavy sweating and dehydration caused by high temperatures can lead to dizziness, slower reaction times and lapses in concentration. These conditions often prompt brief lapses in situational awareness, making the worker more vulnerable to being hit by a moving vehicle or caught in heavy compaction machinery
• warmer climates can alter the very material waste being handled by waste workers, exposing them to high concentrations of airborne biohazards, toxic gases, mould spores and fungi. This can breed more respiratory infections, occupational asthma and gastrointestinal illness
• shifting climate zones have expanded the reach of disease-carrying insects and rodents, already inherently attracted to waste collection zones
• in creating drier, hotter conditions, climate change has heightened the risk of catastrophic fires at material recovery facilities and landfills. When there is improper disposal of volatile materials (such at lithium-ion batteries, for example), strong heat increases the likelihood of spontaneous combustion skyrockets and risks of blast injuries, smoke inhalation and damaged facilities.

So, when it comes to protecting workers and the public from possible harms caused by the waste management industry, there is so much to do. Indeed, a changing, challenging environment is threatening waste worker health, safety and wellbeing like it’s never done before. Managing waste and its impact on the environment is most definitely a health and safety at work issue… and a very pressing one.