The Circular Economy's Impact on Occupational Safety: New Risks in Waste and Resource Management

The global shift toward a Circular Economy (CE)—characterized by design for longevity, repair, reuse, and high-quality recycling—is vital for environmental sustainability.¹ However, this transition fundamentally alters the operational reality of waste and resource management, introducing a host of complex, often unanticipated, Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) risks.² Traditional safety protocols, built around linear manufacturing and disposal, are ill-equipped to handle the heterogeneity, contamination, and chemical unknowns inherent in reverse logistics and complex material recovery processes. This article outlines the 10 critical OHS challenges emerging from the circular economy, spanning chemical exposure, advanced ergonomics, fire risk, and governance gaps. It argues that for the CE to be truly sustainable, safety must be integrated into product design and process engineering from the outset, transforming OHS from a reactive compliance function into a proactive enabler of circularity.

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1. The Challenge of Reverse Logistics: Ergonomics and Traffic Safety

The linear economy moves products efficiently in one direction.³ The circular economy demands complex reverse logistics—collecting, sorting, and transporting used or discarded goods for recovery, often from diverse and unpredictable sources.⁴ This logistical shift creates magnified risks in two areas:

• Ergonomics of Heterogeneity: Unlike standardized incoming raw materials, reverse logistics handles items of varying weights, sizes, and contamination levels. Workers tasked with manual sorting, loading, and inspection face unpredictable forces and loads, dramatically increasing the risk of Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs). Traditional lifting protocols often fail because the "product" (the waste stream item) has no consistent center of gravity or stable hand-hold.
• Traffic Management Complexity: Collection and transport networks often involve smaller vehicles accessing residential, commercial, and often poorly maintained urban areas, leading to increased exposure to traffic hazards, congestion, and public interaction during loading and unloading. Managing these highly dynamic routes requires advanced administrative controls and specific vehicle design to maximize visibility and minimize worker-vehicle interaction risk. The unpredictable nature of collection volumes further complicates planning, often forcing tight schedules that can compromise safety<SUP><small>1</small></SUP>.

2. Chemical Complexity in Material Streams: Unknown Exposure Hazards

The core premise of the CE is the recovery of materials from highly complex products (e.g., electronics, multilayer packaging). This introduces severe chemical exposure risks that are difficult to anticipate and control:

• Legacy Contaminants: Products manufactured decades ago often contain materials now banned or heavily regulated (e.g., lead, mercury, asbestos, Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)).⁵ These materials, safe when encapsulated in the finished product, become friable or airborne during disassembly or shredding, exposing workers to historical, highly toxic agents<SUP><small>2</small></SUP>.
• Unlabeled Substances: The composition of modern, complex items is rarely disclosed for recycling purposes. Workers handling electronic waste (e-waste) or batteries encounter proprietary glues, solvents, flame retardants, and unknown alloys. Standard Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) are useless when the exact chemical composition of the incoming waste stream is a constant unknown.
• Thermal Decomposition: Processes like pyrolysis or thermal recycling can generate highly toxic byproducts when mixed waste streams are heated.⁶ The combustion of plastics, for instance, can release dioxins or furans unless strictly controlled, creating an intense, systemic hazard that requires advanced Engineering Controls (e.g., specialized air scrubbers and monitoring)<SUP><small>3</small></SUP>.

3. Remanufacturing and Repair: Repetitive Strain and Static Load

The CE places new emphasis on repair, refurbishment, and remanufacturing—activities designed to extend product lifespan before recycling.⁷ These activities shift risk from the factory floor to the repair shop, often increasing exposure to ergonomic and human factors risks:

• Repetitive, Precision Work: Repairing complex electronics or small components requires intense visual focus and sustained fine motor movements. This leads to high rates of Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSIs) in the hands, wrists, and shoulders. Unlike assembly lines where automation can minimize repetition, repair work is fundamentally manual and often difficult to standardize.
• Static Postures: Detailed repair often forces the worker into static, prolonged awkward postures (e.g., hunched over a microscope, holding a soldering iron). This static loading rapidly leads to muscle fatigue and chronic MSDs in the neck and back, demanding precision ergonomic interventions like adjustable work benches, specialized tooling, and mandated micro-break administrative controls<SUP><small>4</small></SUP>.
• Psychosocial Stress: Repair work often involves troubleshooting unique, non-standard failures under time pressure (the customer is waiting). This high cognitive and emotional demand contributes significantly to psychosocial stress and burnout, a form of OHS hazard often overlooked in physical workshops.

4. Deconstruction, Dismantling, and Disassembly: High-Risk Manual Processes

To recover high-value materials, complex products must often be manually disassembled (deconstruction) rather than bulk-shredded. This shift from mechanical separation to surgical disassembly reintroduces acute mechanical safety hazards:

• Contact and Penetration Hazards: Manual disassembly requires the use of specialized tools (saws, shears, cutting torches) on unstable, heavy, or sharp objects. This increases the risk of direct contact injuries (lacerations, amputations) and penetrating injuries from fragmented materials under tension or pressure.
• Energy Isolation (LOTO Failure): Products intended for recycling or repair are rarely guaranteed to be fully de-energized. Workers risk electrocution or unexpected motion if capacitors retain charge, pneumatic systems hold pressure, or residual power sources are active. Effective Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) procedures, complex enough in a factory, become highly challenging to apply reliably to a constantly changing stream of unique, incoming products<SUP><small>5</small></SUP>.
• Falling Objects and Heavy Lifting: Dismantling large structures or equipment (e.g., end-of-life vehicles, wind turbines) requires working at height and handling heavy components without the benefit of consistent, factory-grade lifting points or cranes.

5. The Digitalization of Waste: Battery and Electrical Fire Risks

The proliferation of battery technology, essential for the digital products driving consumption, creates an unprecedented and rapidly growing fire hazard in waste management and recovery facilities.⁸

• Thermal Runaway Risk: Lithium-ion batteries, even when damaged or discarded, retain significant energy. During compaction in a waste truck or while being shredded in a material recovery facility (MRF), batteries can short-circuit, leading to thermal runaway—a chemical reaction that causes massive heat and fire.⁹ These fires are extremely difficult to extinguish, often requiring highly specialized non-water-based suppression systems.
• Systemic Fire Hazard: A single damaged battery can ignite an entire load of recycled plastics or paper, leading to multi-million-dollar facility losses and acute worker hazard from smoke inhalation and explosion risk.¹⁰
• Unknown State of Charge: Workers cannot visually determine the state of charge or internal damage of a discarded battery, forcing them to treat every item as an immediate, high-potential fire risk. Effective risk control requires advanced training for all personnel on visual identification, specialized handling tools, and Engineering Controls like dedicated, fire-suppressed battery collection points and highly localized fire suppression systems<SUP><small>6</small></SUP>.

6. Design for Deconstruction (DfD): Safety in the Design Phase

The most powerful strategy for managing circular OHS risk is to eliminate it at the source through Design for Deconstruction (DfD)—a proactive, upstream Elimination Control (Tier 1 of the Hierarchy of Controls).

• Standardized Joints and Fasteners: Designing products with easily accessible, standardized fasteners (e.g., screws instead of proprietary adhesives or welded joints) reduces the need for high-risk cutting or prying during disassembly, thus eliminating mechanical hazards.
• Material Separation: Products must be designed so that hazardous materials (e.g., batteries, mercury switches) are readily identifiable and easily removable at the end of the product's life. This eliminates the risk of these hazards entering the general waste stream and contaminating the process or exposing downstream workers.
• Lifecycle OHS Data: DfD mandates that designers consider the OHS implications of every stage of the product lifecycle—not just manufacturing, but also repair and recycling—and incorporate safety data directly into the product's documentation, accessible via digital identifiers<SUP><small>7</small></SUP>.

7. Contamination and Biological Hazards: The Bio-Safety of Reuse

As the CE prioritizes the reuse of products, items are handled in their end-of-use state, introducing biological and hygiene risks:¹¹

• Biohazards: Used textiles, furniture, medical equipment, and appliances may carry molds, pathogens, bodily fluids, or pests.¹² Workers in sorting centers, repair shops, and refurbishment facilities face exposure to biological contamination, demanding advanced Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and stringent hygiene protocols (Administrative Controls).¹³
• Sanitization Failure: The effectiveness of a reuse loop depends on the quality of cleaning and sanitization. Inadequate or improper sanitization processes not only pose a health risk to the next user (a product safety issue) but also force workers to handle heavily soiled or contaminated goods. This requires validated, industrial-scale sanitization systems as a critical Engineering Control for the reuse process<SUP><small>8</small></SUP>.

8. Informal Economy Integration: Governance and Compliance Gaps

A significant portion of global recycling and remanufacturing is conducted by the informal sector (unregulated small businesses and individual collectors), particularly in developing economies.¹⁴ The CE relies on this sector, but its integration presents immense governance challenges:

• Lack of Control: Informal operations often lack basic OHS controls, proper ventilation, fire suppression, or access to appropriate PPE. Workers, including children, may use highly hazardous methods (e.g., acid leaching to recover metals) for personal gain, leading to severe chronic and acute illnesses.
• ESG Compliance Risk: Companies that rely on informal collection or processing networks for their circular initiatives face severe ESG (Social Pillar) compliance risks and reputational damage if their value chain is linked to unsafe or unethical labor practices<SUP><small>9</small></SUP>.
• The Solution: Companies committed to circularity must invest in formalized "take-back" schemes and partner programs that provide training, safe infrastructure, and legal employment status to the informal sector, elevating OHS standards through economic leverage and formal contracts.

9. Psychosocial Risk in Resource Scarcity: Stress and Pressure

The philosophical shift toward maximizing resource recovery and minimizing waste can introduce subtle but significant psychosocial risks linked to operational pressure.

• Performance Metrics: Aggressive targets for waste reduction or material yield can pressure workers to take shortcuts, bypass safety procedures, or handle hazardous materials without proper controls in a rush to meet circular goals.
• Emotional Labor in Refurbishment: Workers in repair and refurbishment roles often face the emotional stress of dealing with product failures or having to reject a product for reuse, which can conflict with the CE's core mission. This leads to internal conflict and stress, which must be managed through appropriate Administrative Controls like clear operational limits and supportive supervision<SUP><small>10</small></SUP>.

10. Training and Competency Gaps: Handling Diverse and Aging Products

The highly variable nature of circular operations demands a level of versatility and expertise far exceeding that required for linear production.

• Diversity of Knowledge: Workers need deep training not just on general safety, but on the specific hazards associated with disassembling hundreds of different product models, material identification, and handling complex chemical residuals. Training must be modular and constantly updated to reflect the evolving material stream.
• Lack of Standardization: The recycling and remanufacturing sectors often lack the deep standardization of OHS procedures found in traditional manufacturing.¹⁵ Organizations must develop and enforce highly specific, product-focused Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for disassembly and material handling, emphasizing the LOTO protocols for aging, non-standard equipment<SUP><small>11</small></SUP>.

Conclusion

The Circular Economy represents a critical pathway to environmental and economic sustainability, but it must not be built at the expense of worker safety.¹⁶ The new OHS risks—driven by chemical unknowns, ergonomic complexity, and fire hazards in reverse logistics—are systemic and require upstream intervention. True circularity demands that safety be engineered into the product lifecycle via Design for Deconstruction, enforced through integrated Engineering Controls (LEV, specialized fire suppression), and supported by dynamic, high-quality Administrative Controls (specialized training, psychological safety protocols). By proactively addressing these 10 challenges, organizations can ensure that the transition to a circular model is both environmentally sound and ethically responsible, safeguarding the health of the workforce that powers the material revolution.

Check out SNATIKA’s prestigious MSc programs in Occupational Health and Safety, in partnership with ENAE Business School, Spain!

Citation List

1. HSE (Health and Safety Executive). (2018). Managing Health and Safety in Waste and Recycling. UK Government.
2. Borthakur, A., & Govindarajulu, A. (2020). E-waste and Occupational Health Hazards: Risks to Workers in the Informal Sector. Journal of Occupational Health and Environmental Medicine, 15(4), 312-320.
3. UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). (2019). Chemicals in the Circular Economy: A Review of the Risks and Opportunities.
4. ISO 6385:2016. (2016). Ergonomics – General principles, vocabulary and concepts. International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
5. NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health). (2021). Safety Checklist for Electrical Lockout/Tagout Procedures. CDC.
6. NFPA (National Fire Protection Association). (2020). Fire Protection Guide for Hazardous Materials.
7. Prendeville, S., et al. (2014). Circular Economy: OHS and Design for Disassembly. Proceedings of the European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL).
8. WHO (World Health Organization). (2017). Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Health Care Facilities. (Relevant to biological risks in reuse/refurbishment).
9. ILO (International Labour Organization). (2021). Safety and Health in the Circular Economy: A Focus on Waste Management.
10. Bakker, C. A., et al. (2014). Products that Last: Product Design for Circular Economy. Delft University of Technology.
11. OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). (2020). Controlling Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout). U.S. Department of Labor.