Tyedee Bins stand up to bear-power

While we’ve all heard of companies doing product testing to make sure their products do what they say they’ll do, using three large black bears as product testers may seem a little much. That is unless you’re TyeDee Bin, the company from Guelph, Ont. that manufactures animal resistant garbage containers.

While TyeDee Bin has been making animal resistant garbage cans for 25 years, it’s only now that they’ll be certified in Canada as truly “animal resistant.”

“While we’ve done testing (on our products) with 800 lb polar bears and 600 lb grizzly bears with great success on our side, there’s never been a facility or certifying body in Canada. Now we’ll be able to add that certification to our products,” TyeDee Bin’s sales manager Gary Jonsson said as three large black bears at the BC Wildlife Park clawed, chewed and jumped on his Original model container.

Working in conjunction with the BC Wildlife Park and WildSafe BC, TyeDee Bin will be the first company to be tested under the newly formed North American Testing of Bear Resistant Products (NAToBRP) certification.

Until now the only facility to do this type of wildlife resistant product testing was the Living with Wildlife Foundation in Montana.

“As our mandate is to decrease wildlife-human encounters it only seemed fitting that we should have some testing in Canada,” said WildSafe BC provincial coordinator Frank Ritcey. “Having NAToBRP and working with the BC Wildlife Park we’re now able to certify products that will, in the long run, lessen encounters between wildlife and humans. When animal-human encounters are attractant related, over 50 per cent of those are human garbage incidents, so products such as TyeDee Bins will make a big difference.”

To receive NAToBRP certification an animal resistant product must withstand at least one hour of exposure to the wildlife it’s designed to deter. In this case the container was filled with fruit, fish, honey, peanut butter and other bear attractants before being exposed to Hamilton, Tuk and Numees, the resident black bears at the BC Wildlife Park. While they tested the product as thoroughly as any hungry black bear would, the TyeDee Bin was too much for the hungry bruins.

For more information visit bearaware.bc.ca and tyedeebin.com