Jeff Martin brings a deep well of industry experience and a profoundly personal commitment to safety to his role as Casella’s Vice President of Safety. After decades in waste management and years supporting teams across operations and safety, he now channels both his professional expertise and life‑shaping experiences to strengthen Casella’s safety culture. His leadership centers on empowering employees, elevating accountability, and embracing technology that protects both our people and the communities we serve, reinforcing that safety is not just a priority, but a shared responsibility woven into every part of our work.
I joined Waste Management in 1996, where I served for 25 years in a variety of capacities, from sales to operations to safety. In 2022, I retired, but I came out of retirement to join Lytx, which is a video safety technology company. After retiring, I got bored and missed the people in the industry terribly, so I consulted until I joined the Casella team in a full-time capacity.
My wife’s previous husband was killed in a workplace accident involving a forklift when her three children were ages 5, 4, and 2, and I became an instant dad when I joined her family. Then our son, Connor, when he was 10 years old, was critically injured, and his best friend was killed in a boating accident when a wakeboarder swerved into their tube’s wake and collided with them. So those two lifetime tragedies have really propelled me to not only embrace safety, but to take it personally and to share those stories with people. It doesn't have to happen. Casella workers are trained to realize how things can change in an instant. That fuels me. There's nothing better than seeing people understand that they know that their safety is most important.
The ability to work with a highly respected company with a tremendous reputation. Casella is a highly motivated and very progressive company, in that the ability to safely service the customers efficiently is a key focus. We're going to drive the efficiencies. Efficiency is not about going faster — I want to make that very clear. It's about eliminating wasteful steps in your day. When you do that with great customer service, and you do it safely, it builds a great momentum and a great spirit within the company.
It’s the employee engagement and the one-on-one accountability. We've got to win hearts in order to win minds. We want to get to a place where we have 100% of the employees wanting to be safe instead of doing it as a condition of employment. When people are fully bought in, they are some of the best cheerleaders and fellow coaches on the front lines. It's a great opportunity to further strengthen our safety culture and really look at taking a building block approach. It's the most rewarding thing for me when you see people believing in safety, because nothing's more important. We want everyone to go home safely each and every day.
It's really leadership by example. It starts with Ned Coletta and the rest of the leadership team, who are fully committed to taking the next step in the safety culture at Casella. Any top safety performance company must start with senior leadership. If it's there and we all know what is expected at the top level of the company, that has a cascading effect through the organization. It's infectious, it's exciting.
The artificial intelligence today, it's what is referred to as a “coach in the cab.” If I pick up my cellphone or I don't have my seat belt on, it's going to go, “ding, ding, ding, seat belt.” So now I know, I have to put on my seat belt. If I don't, it will continue to remind me. Same thing if I pick up a cell phone. The power in that, with today's safety technology, is that it allows drivers to self-correct in the moment, and they feel good about it. It not only protects our drivers, but it also makes sure that we are safely servicing the communities that we're responsible for.
One of the ways we are looking to eliminate muscular-skeletal injuries that are related to our rear load operations trucks, and replacing them with what are called automated side load (ASL) trucks that can pick up a 45- or 96-gallon cart from a residence curbside and safely collect that without the use of people, who unfortunately are not only subject to muscular skeletal injuries but susceptible to being struck in the street by vehicles.
It all starts with our new hire orientation and training program and making sure that in our facilities, employees understand the rules, guidelines, and expectations, and are outfitted with personal protective equipment (PPE), and most importantly, are observed and coached on awareness and operating practices. We are developing our new hire orientation and training programs so that it is replicated easily throughout our system. Whether it's a recycling facility or a disposal facility, we are making sure everybody understands that every employee or visitor has the authority to stop work immediately. If you see something wrong or somebody is at risk, stop work authority is your authority. It's everyone's authority, and it's very important.
We participate in the National Waste and Recycling Association and share best practices and safety. The great news is that, whether it's within the industry or outside of the immediate solid waste recycling industry, there is a spirit among safety professionals to steal shamelessly and share with one another, because who can ever argue with saving lives and saving dreams?
First and foremost is tremendous care for our employees and the folks affected. With any incident or near miss, it must be dealt with openly and honestly. What are those takeaways? What opportunities do we have, individually and collectively, to address and mitigate before the risk presents itself, and to obviously rectify it? What can we do to raise awareness in training and other remediations to prevent it from happening again?
I think the really big one is that safety is everyone's responsibility at Casella. That is our belief system, and everyone owns it and is empowered. We’re focused on taking great care of our customers, but we understand we have a great responsibility to do it safely.
Casella Waste Systems, Inc., headquartered in Rutland, Vermont, is one of the largest recyclers and most experienced fully integrated resource management companies in the Eastern United States. Founded in 1975 as a single truck collection service, Casella has grown its operations to provide solid waste collection and disposal, transfer, recycling, and organics services to more than one million residential, commercial, municipal, institutional, and industrial customers and provides professional resource management services to over 10,000 customer locations in more than 40 states.
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