RPC Group’s annual Safety Week will take place this October with the theme ‘Protecting You, Me and Our Environment.’

Each year employees of the Group are invited to enter a competition to choose the slogan for the week’s activities. This year’s winning entry – from John Neath of RPC Design – reflects RPC’s view that the overall health and safety of everyone is strongly linked to our protection of the environment.

“A key focus of every Safety Week is to minimise and eliminate adverse effects that can impact on people’s safety, but at the same time we also seek to generate actions that have a positive impact as well,” explains Michael Stegeman, RPC Bebo CEO and Group Health and Safety Coordinator.

“For example, in order to avoid unnecessary hazards, we focus on keeping our factories and offices clean and tidy and this naturally leads to finding effective ways to dispose of our waste with an emphasis on reuse and recycling and avoiding sending items to landfill. RPC is also a signatory to Operation Clean Sweep, the international initiative to reduce plastic pellet loss to the environment, and finding solutions to further improve our housekeeping in this area will be another important objective for colleagues during the week.”

Now in its 8th year, RPC Safety Week was established to provide an annual showcase for the Group’s ongoing commitment to health and safety. As well as the prevention of accidents, there is an equally strong emphasis on general health and wellbeing. This includes activities such as blood pressure, and glucose and cholesterol level checks, eye and hearing tests, ergonomic advice on sitting and lifting, and information on healthy diets and nutrition.

Equally important, the RPC safety message extends to all visitors and contractors to the company’s premises, as well as to colleagues’ families and friends.

“Safety Week has become an important annual event but we judge its success on what happens during the other 51 weeks of the year as well,” concludes Michael Stegeman. “The fundamental objective is to ensure that we are always vigilant and committed to living and working safety, looking out for each other and our environment 365 days of the year.”