The National Waste & Recycling Association announced the launch of its third safety stand down with an emphasis on keeping communities safe during the back to school season. NWRA’s Back to School Safety Stand Down will provide information and guidance material to address driver distractions, benchmarked successful practices and operations planning for waste and recycling collectors to improve safety in school zones and bus stops around them.

The 2016 NWRA Safety Stand Down on Back to School Safety launches on August 22 with a weeklong training and awareness initiative focused around added safety precautions to protect students, teachers and families from harm during this busy season. This NWRA Safety Stand Down will include a daily focus on safety issues related to managing distractions, creating safe behaviors, and implementing operational controls that will help keep streets safer while more buses and cars are on the roadways including parents driving their children to school to teachers and college students heading in to their classes. This Safety Stand Down will conclude on August 26, 2016.

NWRA has made safety its top priority, a pledge shared by its member companies. This Stand Down will provide participating companies, partner organizations and other interested entities with the tools, guidance and support necessary to move the needle on incidents in school zones and overall road safety from the perspective of the waste and recycling industry. NWRA has made this program free for all participants as a public service.

Approximately 100 children in the United States are killed every year while walking to or from school and another 25,000 children sustain injuries as a result of school zone accidents.

"The purpose of the NWRA Safety Stand Down is to raise awareness, prevent, and teach waste and recycling industry workers and employers about working on busy streets during this season and provide valuable resources to address these concerns,” NWRA President and CEO Sharon H. Kneiss said in a statement. “Safety is everyone’s responsibility; this is something we take very seriously. With that, we seek to do our part through this Stand Down and we invite other industries and stakeholders to join us in this effort.”

NWRA’s Stand Down will partner with other safety organizations that communicate to youth groups, pedestrians, employers and drivers of all ages to help promote and communicate a shared commitment to safety on the roadways and around school zones and bus stops to protect the communities this industry serves.

Additional details about the Stand Down can be found here. The Safety Stand Down effort is using the social media hashtags: #SchoolStreetsNeighbors #BackToSchoolSafety