Global Health & Safety Management Systems

Our health and safety programs have achieved great results. Our behavior-based safety process plays a key role in achieving continuous health and safety performance improvement. This employee-led process focuses on desired safe behaviors, immediate reinforcement of safe behaviors with positive feedback, and coaching to correct at-risk behaviors.  Reducing ergonomic-related injuries is an integral part of our operations.  We also provide ergonomic consulting to key customers to help them improve safety for their organization.  We protect our employees from the hazardous effects of noise, chemicals, heat, radiation, and infectious agents through comprehensive industrial hygiene and occupational health programs.  Our diligence in continuously evaluating and improving the effectiveness of our health and safety programs drives our success, as we approach world-class performance.  As a result, we provide safe work environments for employees worldwide with total incidence rates as much as 75 percent lower than the industry average for manufacturing locations.

International Paper is a leader in the number of U.S. business sites certified by the federal and state OSHA Voluntary Protection Program with 49 sites.  This program recognizes the cooperative relationship among management, employees, and OSHA to provide a safe work environment based upon a mutual commitment to safety and built upon sustainable management systems.

International Paper is driving continuous improvement in our EHS process by developing new tools that will allow us to more closely track and monitor events at all of our operations worldwide.

We are identifying trends and taking appropriate actions to minimize risk, long before we have a more significant event.  We are becoming more efficient in the delivery and execution of our EHS processes utilizing our experience in voluntary protection programs to implement programs and processes that deliver proven results.

We are "doing more with less" in an era when resources are managed to levels never imagined 10 years ago.  Yet, as we continue to optimize our organization, we continue to see improvement in our results.