Advocacy

SGIA has joined the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District’s (APCD) Multipollutant Stakeholder Group (MPSG). This group will discuss current air pollution challenges and make recommendations for next steps to improve local air quality and reduce health impacts from air pollution. The MPSG will also look at reducing fine particulate pollution and air toxics, which may provide co-benefits to the effort to reduce ozone.

In response to Federal OSHA revising its requirements for injury reporting, legislation was passed in August of 2019 by the California legislature that required California OSHA to revise its injury reporting requirements. While the changes required by the legislation are similar to the Federal OSHA requirements, the legislation set some more stringent requirements. The legislation also changed the manner in which injuries are to be reported. Click to read more!

The National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health held an open meeting at the Department of Labor on December 12th to discuss updates in the safety and health area. The morning discussion focused on regulatory updates. The afternoon discussion was centered around OSHA's Request For Information (RFI) about Leading Indicators used in the workplace. Read the full post to learn more and to fill out the survey to provide feedback for OSHA's RFI.

November 15th is recognized as National Recycling Day. To recognize this event, US EPA hosted its second summit to address and advance recycling in the US. SGIA, as one of 165 signatories of the America Recycles Pledge, was excited to attend and be a part of the progressive discussions taking place.

On October 23, 2019, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issued its final rule updating Subpart 226-1, Solvent Cleaning. The major additions to this rule were the provisions in Subpart 226-2, Industrial Cleaning Solvents. SGIA submitted comments on this rule expressing concerns that the rule would apply to printing operations and urging the DEC to exclude printing from it because cleaning solvents used in printing are already subject to the requirements in a specific rule, Part 234) that applies to printing operations.

The November bi-monthly meeting of the Small Business Administration focused mainly around safety and updates to OSHA regulations. Key topics included updating the Hazard Communication Standard, and the RFI for the LOTO Standard.

As a follow up to the comments submitted in August of this year, SGIA Government Affairs staff met with key OSHA representatives regarding the information provided to OSHA in response to their request for feedback on revising the Lockout/Tagout Standard. Overall, the meeting went very well and the response from OSHA was positive on several key issues.

On November 14th, forty-five companies gathered in the Ronald Regan Building and International Trade Center to showcase new and exciting products and services in the recycling and circular economy space. The gathering served to educate the public about available recycling innovations as well as build business to business partnerships to continue to strengthen the circular economy.

SGP, the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership Program, held its first regional community event at Bolger Print in, Minneapolis, MN on November 6th. The half day program featured speakers from print manufacturing, recycling, and the sports industry. With over 50 attendees, the program provided a very informative and interactive discussion about the logistics of sustainability and the building of partnership style relationships among the speakers and attendees.

SGIA sponsored The Tag and Label Manufacturers Institute's (TLMI) first Recycling Summit in St. Louis on Wednesday, October 16th. The purpose of this event was to bring together local businesses with recycling companies in their community. A waste to energy facility also attended to educate the attendees on the benefits this option provides for certain non-recyclable materials.