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Staying
healthy
with
WASH
TEXT
HELEN MOSTER
PHOTOGRAPHY
UPM
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
Every workplace should offer safe
drinking water, proper sanitation
facilities and good hygiene. The WASH
programme sets the benchmark for
healthier work environments.
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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