‘We’re just kind of shocked’: Manufacturer open to making changes following donation bin death
Posted January 3, 2019 6:24 am.
Last Updated January 3, 2019 1:29 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
WEST VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – After news of yet another clothing donation bin-related death on the Lower Mainland, one of the country’s makers of the products says it is open to making whatever changes are necessary to ensure safety.
“We’re just kind of shocked,” says John Luison, who owns Rangeview Fabricating Inc. in Hamilton Ontario.
A man in his 30s died after being found stuck in a bin in West Vancouver on Sunday.
Luison’s company is one of the largest manufacturers of the steel containers in the country and ships across the U.S., and even Australia.
He says Rangeview went 20 years without a single death involving one of its bins. And while it didn’t produce the West Vancouver donation bin in question, Luison says he’d like to know exactly what went wrong.
“They were not on our bin, although that concerns us. We were actually thinking of flying out to Vancouver and looking at that particular model to try and understand what happened so we can make sure it doesn’t happen on one of our models.”
He says he wants his company to lead the way when it comes to any safety reforms.
“We look at this as our responsibility. Being one of the larger manufacturers in Canada, I almost take it as a personal responsibility to lead the industry and make sure it’s as safe as possible,” says Luison.
“Going back probably about five or six months ago that we talked to the Canadian Standards Association [CSA Group]. So we’re looking at possibly having a standard for the industry. We’re the ones that want that, also, we want to feel comfortable enough. We’ve called CSA and asked them if there is a way that they can come and test our product to see if it can conform to a certain standard or something like that. But there is no standard for that product [bin].”
The company has also been in talks with UBC engineers for months.
“We’ve been working with the University of British Columbia to try and come up with a design that suits everybody’s needs. Products that are out there, used as they’re intended for, could never possibly hurt anybody. You almost have to go to quite extreme measures to get hurt.”
That collaboration could eventually include other institutions.
Rangeview is also planning to send instructional videos to its customers showing them how to disable a potentially-dangerous retracting door on some of its models.
“You could take the existing product [bin] and, in that particular model, and actually in a short amount of time disengage that feature, the theft-prevention feature. That will also eliminate any pinch points or any possibility of something like this happening again. We are going to be publishing that and sending it out to customers. Fortunately we do have a fix on our product; I can’t speak to other companies.”
This move comes amid the District of West Vancouver’s move to seal off a number of large donation bins in that municipality, following Sunday’s death.
