The Volunteer STAR Award is Tennessee's highest honor for workplace safety and health and is a nationally recognized program patterned after the OSHA Voluntary Protection Program.

Georgia-Pacific Lebanon Tennessee Facility Recognized by the State for Workplace Safety

March 9, 2026 - Georgia-Pacific's Lebanon Corrugated facility was recently recognized by the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration (TOSHA) division of the Department of Labor and Workforce Development (TDLWD) with its Volunteer Safety Through Accountability and Recognition (STAR) Award. This is the fourth time TOSHA has honored Georgia-Pacific with the award; the facility received its initial certification in 2010.

The Volunteer STAR Award is Tennessee's highest honor for workplace safety and health and is a nationally recognized program patterned after the OSHA Voluntary Protection Program (VPP). The standard for participation in the STAR program confirms a company's safety and health program helps reduce accidents and injuries and notes the facility as a Volunteer STAR site. There are currently 33 Volunteer STAR sites in Tennessee.

How did the Lebanon team earn the Volunteer STAR award four times? How do they keep themselves and each other safe in a manufacturing environment?

Georgia-Pacific prioritizes the safety and well-being of employees and communities through its Path to Zero Safety Strategy. The company encourages decisions made through Principle Based Management (PBM) and urges employees to use good judgment and adapt as needed. Georgia-Pacific also encourages employees to learn from incidents, continually improve, and values bottom-up solutions to workplace challenges.

The Georgia-Pacific Path to Zero Safety Strategy includes three main aspects:

• Leadership: We use PBM to connect to the hearts and minds of our teams.
• Human & Organizational Performance (HOP) concepts: Integrate concepts that guide team members to effectively learn and create the capacity to fail safely.
• Critical Hazard Risk Reduction: Creates a safer workplace by recognizing risks that historically cause the most severe injuries, including mobile equipment and pedestrian interactions, falls, chemicals, thermal releases, fires, explosions, and unexpected release of stored or active energy during equipment operations or maintenance.

An entrepreneurial approach to workplace safety by employees is also supported by parent company Koch's Safety Vision. The vision directs focus to building capability in ALL employees to address hazards, so no one is seriously injured or killed.

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Georgia-Pacific and its subsidiaries are among the world's leading manufacturers and marketers of bath tissue, paper towels and napkins, tableware, paper-based packaging, cellulose and building products. The company operates approximately 150 facilities and employs approximately 30,000 people directly

SOURCE: Georgia-Pacific