It’s irritating when an animal upheaves your garbage bin and causes a mess. Manufacturers are making better bear-resistant garbage bins, many of which undergo rigorous testing before entering the marketplace.  Using bears to test bins saves other bear’s lives, because when a bear is found in a neighborhood it unfortunately can end up dead.

The Bear-Resistant Products Testing Program works with manufacturers and vendors of bear-resistant products to develop new and improved products and techniques for minimizing conflicts with bears and other predators.  For a bin to pass the test, it must remain intact and functional without the bears gaining any of the foods placed inside the containers for a minimum of 30 to 60 minutes, depending on which of the three star passing categories the product makes it into.

The Program has some product test results online, so if you’d like to do some research before you buy a bin, check to see what products passed their test and at what level.

The Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center (GWDC) in Yellowstone  is well known for its bear-resistant bin testing.  Their website shows that they treat animals humanely, and also support conservation through research and education.

It’s fun watching a bear test a bin!  The GWDC has some great photos of bears testing bins, and there’s a video available online at Bear Saver.com that shows a bear in action.  There are several other videos online but they loaded very slowly, or had bad lighting, on my computer.

My promotion of this video in no way suggests that I am familiar with or endorse the product.  I don’t know the products, so please do your own research before buying one.