UPM-Biofore-Magazine-1-2016-ENG

TEXT HELEN MOSTER

PHOTOGRAPHY UPM

Staying healthy with WASH

Every workplace should offer safe drinking water, proper sanitation facilities and good hygiene. The WASH programme sets the benchmark for healthier work environments.

A safe, healthy workplace is the basic right of all employees. Safe, clean drinking water, as well as access to sanitation facilities, are human rights ratified by the UN in 2010. UPMwants to make sure that all its employees, regardless of their country or location, work in an environment that is as healthy as possible. In line with this goal, UPM is the first forest industry company to commit to the WASH programme of theWorld Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). WASH is an acronym standing for ‘Water, Sanitation and Hygiene’. The programme aims to guarantee a healthy workplace for all, as well as prevent the spread of contagious diseases. It requires companies to monitor the water, sanitation and hygiene conditions within their organisation and tomake any required improvements. In launching this programme, theWBCSD addresses a major

problem. More than 1.8 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean, safe drinking water. Approximately 4.1 billion people lack sufficient sanitation or, in short, access to a proper lavatory. The head of theWBCSD’s water programme, Joppe Cramwinckel , presents a list of 35 leading international companies that have signed up for theWASH programme. The goal is to increase the number to fifty. “When the project was initially launched, I wondered why companies were so slow to sign up. Then I realised that access to water, sanitation and hygiene is a huge issue and companies genuinely want to invest in it to make sure all employees have access. They want to be sure they won’t run into any surprises in their systems. A company operating at a thousand sites is likely to have more difficulties in finding deficiencies than one with only five sites”, Cramwinckel points out. Getting more companies to sign

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