Innovative training techniques driving Toxfree forward.

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Toxfree prides itself on being safe, reliable and sustainable, which is essential if you are one of the largest environmental waste management and industrial service providers in Australia.

With over 57 facilities nationally and employing a team of over 1100 experienced and qualified staff, Toxfree has a portfolio of treatment technologies and technical expertise to enable the cost effective remediation and treatment of a broad range of solid, liquid, industrial and hazardous waste. Servicing over 20,000 customers nationally, Toxfree provides solutions for some of Australia’s leading businesses and government organisations throughout Australia. Within Toxfree there are three service streams: Waste Services, Industrial Services, Technical and Environmental Services.

Due to the high noise work environments that operators work in and to address the risks associated with noise induced hearing loss (NIHL), Toxfree introduced an initiative called “Train Right – Lets Communicate” to ensure personnel are proficient in the use of specialist equipment through training and skill verification on site. The initiative is founded on the introduction of communication headsets (Class 5 approved hearing protection) where hearing conversation is paramount in high noise work environments, whether the sounds are sudden or prolonged.

The approved headsets enhance clear and concise communications between the trainees/operators and trainer/assessors where both communication and hearing protection is critical in a training environment, whilst still blocking out the harmful background noise and protecting the operators hearing.

Toxfree has recently been recognised as an ABA100 Winner for innovation in The Australian Business Awards 2015 for its “train right – let’s communicate” initiative, resulting in a reduction in complaints, injuries and incidents since its implementation.

Steve Gostlow, Toxfree Managing Director says “at Toxfree our values are safe, reliable and sustainable and our safety innovation, train right – let’s communicate is a relatively simple and novel approach to ensuring communications are enhanced when undertaking industrial service activities, predominantly when undertaking training and skill verification in high noise environments. The innovation was developed in the field by the industrial service team and TrainRight Australia.

This award highlights Toxfree’s ongoing encouragement to improving safety in the workplace by encouraging staff to put forward new initiatives that can be researched further to ensure a safe work place and as in this case, evolved to reduce the risk of noise induced hearing loss.