A three-year pilot project to test the viability of bear-resistant garbage cans was not successful, city council heard on Monday.
City director of civic operations Blake McIntosh said 300 bear-resistant garbage cans were provided to residents in the Hart Highlands area in early 2019. The area had a history of bear problems, he added.
“The bear-specific carts included a built-in lid locking mechanism that secures refuse in the cart. When picked up by the automated trucks and inverted to dump, the lock mechanism would release, allowing for routine garbage collection,” McIntosh said. “The results of the pilot project, after the three-year duration, indicate that the locking latch mechanism is unreliable and problematic, especially in the winter months.”
Eight per cent of the garbage cans had latch failures, he said. In addition, the locking mechanism was prone to freezing up in the winter, forcing solid waste staff to leave the truck to open the cans manually.
“As a result of these challenges, administration is not expanding the program to other problematic areas within the city, using the pilot project cart model,” McIntosh said. “Administration will continue to investigate other bear-resistant cart options that will not impact collection efficiencies and are better-suited for our winter conditions.”
Residents in the pilot project area will be allowed to keep the bear-resistant can, as long as it works properly, McIntosh added in a written report to city council. Those keeping the cans will be billed as if they have a large garbage can.
Pilot project participants who want to return to using a regular garbage can won’t be charged an exchange fee, and city staff will deliver it directly to their home on collection day.
The bear-resistant garbage cans were five times as expensive for the city to purchase as the conventional ones, a city report from 2019 said.
“Over the past 10 years, Prince George had an average of 890 bear sighting calls and the destruction of 35 bears per year, which unfortunately represents the highest numbers of any community in B.C.,” the 2019 report said. “While a large percentage of the total bear occurrence calls within the City of Prince George are typically related to observed bear sightings (44 per cent), around 40 (per cent) of the bear occurrence calls were directly related to bears actively knocking down garbage cans in search of food.”
The areas in the city with the highest number of bear sightings reported included Hart Highlands to Aberdeen, Stirling/Moore’s Meadow, and Lansdowne/Charella/Peden Hill/College Heights.
Coun. Brian Skakun said many residents use bungee cords or rachet straps to secure their garbage can lids against bears.
“We’re fully in support of those temporary mechanisms. We like to keep the integrity of the cart intact,” McIntosh said. “Obviously when it is put out to the curb, we need those removed, because the automatic collection will not work. But those are definitely a deterrence for bear interactions.”
