Group seeks quick fix after donation bin deaths
UBC-Okanagan prof assembling design team
A task group is forming to find an immediate retrofit design to make clothing donation bins safer, after a man died in a bin on the weekend.
British Columbia’s coroner is investigating four such deaths since 2015.
UBC-Okanagan engineering professor Ray Taheri is recruiting other professors, students and bin manufacturers to create a life-saving fix and hopes to have the group together “in the next 24 hours.”
“Current designs don’t address the question, ‘What if people don’t do what they are supposed to do? What if they try to take out instead of putting in? What if they try to get inside?’ ” he said. “From that perspective, (the existing bins) have a major flaw.”
A 34-year-old Vancouver man died late Sunday night or early Monday morning after becoming trapped in the access point of a Community Living Society bin in Ambleside Park in West Vancouver.
In July 2018, a woman died in a Developmental Disabilities Association bin at the West Point Grey Community Centre in Vancouver, while others have died in Surrey and Pitt Meadows. One man died in a bin in Ontario last month, while another died in Calgary in 2017.
In August, Taheri tasked his first-year engineering students with the redesign of donation bins and they created dozens of potential solutions. His fourth-year students will take the best from those ideas and create prototypes for an entirely new bin design later this year in a quest to solve the problem permanently.
But the latest death has given the project new urgency and the professor is pressing for a quick way fix the existing bins to prevent further loss of life.
“I’m sure there are things that can be done immediately,” said Taheri, who cancelled travel plans to work on the project. “We have a maker space on our campus to find a solution to the immediate problem.”
There are thousands of bins in the field across B.C. and several designs, so Taheri is asking local manufacturers to send the different versions to the Kelowna campus so his engineers can get started.
“It might be possible to do a little welding here or there and add a (bracket) that will prevent people from getting in,” he said. “This is a serious problem and we would like to solve it as soon as possible.
The Developmental Disabilities Association, which has about 300 donation bins in southwestern B.C., has been working with Taheri on potential solutions to the box design problem, spokesman Kevin Chan said. DDS staff helped judge student designs in last fall’s competition.
“We would like to work with Ray and his engineers on a collaborative project regarding donation bins,” Chan said.
“Community safety is always a top priority for DDA, whether it’s for our clients or the general public.”