Welcome back, Brightmarkers, to the 2nd Quarterly SafeMark newsletter covering all things Health, Safety, and Environmental. As previously mentioned, this newsletter is designed to cover a wide range of topics in HSE, from ongoing projects to lessons learned to employee spotlights and interviews. This newsletter covers all of Brightmark—both RNG and Plastics—and is meant to be a positive source of information sharing.
HSE Culture: “Protect People and the Environment”
As we get deeper into the meaning of our HSE Culture Tenant, I wanted to focus on the 1st element of it in this newsletter: “Empowerment is paramount.”
Let’s start with a simple definition—according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, empower means to “Give official authority to.” In this sense, it means we are giving our employees the power and ability to influence safety and environmental excellence within Brightmark. This doesn’t just mean with the job you’re doing; this means within the company and beyond. You have the right, dare I say the duty, to ensure safety in everything we do, and it’s required of everyone as part of their job to look out for yourself and anyone else working for or with Brightmark!
A couple of key pieces to this core element:
“Our people are the keystone of our HSE Culture.”
Without you, we aren’t Brightmark, and if you don’t do it, who will? You, our people, are the most important part of Brightmark and of our culture.
“Everyone is empowered to use stop work authority and pause the job without negative consequences.”
I realize this is easier said than done but we need to do this, nonetheless. We can’t let fear stop us from doing the right thing. If we see something unsafe or not right, say something. If you don’t feel comfortable being direct with the folks involved, don’t just stay quiet; get someone else involved and ensure the right thing is done.
In our next newsletter, we’ll give some more background about our 2nd core element:
“Be bright, do right, don’t waste in haste.”
HSE Interviews and Spotlights
The most important part of our HSE Culture is our people. A lot is expected of each and every one of us regarding protecting people and the environment. To be able to do that, we need strong leadership at all levels of the organization, and that starts with the executive leadership team. With this, I had the pleasure of conducting the second interview in our Executive interview series with Gerrud Wallaert, Chief Operating Officer of RNG, and Jay Schabel, President of Plastics.
HSE Management System and Learning Management System (LMS): Assure by Evotix (ABE)
As many of you have been involved in the process or rollout thus far, you may be aware of what we’ve been doing with the rollout of the Assure by Evotix system, or “ABE,” as it’s so affectionately been referred to recently.
The Incident Reporting Module is Live
This is available to anyone without log-on via the web link or QR code.
Learning Management System (LMS)
This will consist of online courses—some brought to us from a 3rd party and some created in-house. We have begun the configuration of this part of the system as well as kicked off a Learning and Development (L&D) Working group to holistically look at how we handle training and competency across Brightmark.
More to Come
We will be moving on to our risk module and environmental compliance module and then finishing up with our Auditing module before the end of the year.
Mike’s Minute for Safety
By Mike Kyer
There are a couple of things that are pretty much a guarantee this time of year: One, we will all see orange barrels lining the highways and interstates we travel, and two, bugs!
During a recent NAES Safety Committee meeting, Sarah Mitchell brought up “FR Clothing” as an acceptable insect repellant. Great topic, Sarah!
That’s right, folks, not all insect repellant is the safe for our FR Clothing. The common insect repellant contains DEET and should not be used. DEET is found in various products and is highly flammable, especially in concentrated form.
So, before you grab the bug spray out of your tackle box or hiking pack, stop and have a look at it first.
Now, what do you do if you have already sprayed flammable insect repellant on your FR? Please, don’t throw them away. Just launder them at least twice or more until you can no longer smell the insect repellant, and continue normal use.
If you are going to or need to use insect repellant, each site should have a can of the approved FR-safe insect repellant. If not, you can grab a can at most retailers (Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, etc.).
Welcome to a Couple of New HSE Members
I’d like to take a minute to introduce a couple of new members to the HSE teams at Brightmark.
From the RNG HSE Team
We’d like to welcome Tommy Taggart as our new Sr. Manager, HSE Assurance and Technical Programs. In this new role, Tommy will be responsible for ensuring ABE gets fully implemented, owning the management of HSE vendors and supporting procurement with vendor management, chairing the L&D Working group, and building out the roadmap for how we audit HSE across Brightmark.
In Tommy’s own words:
“I come to Brightmark after 25+ years in the HSE field, with much of that time spent in the areas of waste management and heavy industrial/chemical manufacturing. Most recently, I served as Sub-Regional EHSS Manager for Axalta Coating Systems (formerly DuPont Coatings). I live in the Huntsville, Alabama area. I have one daughter, Savannah, who lives in Nashville, TN and works as a Tour Manager for various musical artists; so, I get to live vicariously through her stories and adventures on the road! My hobbies include hiking, gardening, fishing, golf, traveling, attending college football games, and spending quality time with my Chocolate Lab, Waylon. My wife of 34 years (Brenda) recently retired, and shekeeps me busy with lots of projects and “honey-do” lists!! I’m excited to join the Brightmark Team, and I look forward to getting to know everyone and working together to meet our goals!”
From the Plastic HSE Team
We’d like to welcome Brandon Hamel as our new Environmental Engineer. In this new role, Brandon will be responsible for ensuring environmental compliance and moving Plastics to environmental excellence.
In Brandon’s own words:
“I graduated from Purdue with a degree in Chemical Engineering in 2022. I worked for a short time manufacturing polyurethane foam before I learned about Brightmark and was captured by the mission of the company and knew I had to be a part of it. I live in Fort Wayne, Indiana with my wife, Maryanne, and our 4-month-old daughter, Bernadette. When I am not at work, you’ll find me outside and with them, either playing ultimate frisbee or hiking. I am very excited to be a part of Brightmark and look forward to all the work we do together.”
Please join us in welcoming Tommy and Brandon to the team.
Safety Challenge of the Quarter
Start meetings with a safety moment. It doesn’t have to be something long and elaborate, just a simple touchpoint to set the tone of the meeting and ensure we’re focused on Safety first!
Future Newsletters
I hope you’ve enjoyed this 2nd Quarterly HSE newsletter. As always, if there is something else you’d like to see covered in these newsletters or our interviews, or have a suggestion for an employee we should spotlight for exemplifying our HSE Culture, reach out and let us know!
Also, do you want to be a contributor to our newsletter? Please feel free to email me at joseph.atkinson@brightmark.com.
Have a safe day!
