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Mission company answers the call of Maple Ridge tent city for plastic pallets

VIP Soap Products just needs someone to be able to deliver them to the homeless camp
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Jasmine Daly tries to dump water on the inside of an abandoned tent at tent city. (Colleen Flanagan/THE NEWS)

A company in Mission has more than 300 plastic pallets it wants to donate to Anita Place Tent City.

The only problem is the business doesn’t have a way of delivering them to the homeless camp by the Haney Bypass in Maple Ridge.

Earlier this week, residents of the camp had been requesting a donation of plastic pallets to get the tents off the ground with all the wet weather and winter approaching.

Campers need plastic ones specifically, not wood pallets because of fire safety regulations.

“If someone can come and get them, they can just have these pallets,” said Darrell Janzen, with VIP Soap Products.

“We get shipments of some of our chemicals in on these plastic pallets and we don’t use them for any outgoing shipping. So they just build up,” added Janzen, who works in the shipping department.

“We have a few recyclers who pick up some now and then, but they do just build up.”

There are around 320 pallets available for donation.

Janzen said any vehicle that you could strap the pallets down to would work, although only eight would fit in the bed of a pickup.

“They have to be strapped. They are very slippery on top of each other,” Janzen warned.

“The best thing would be if someone had a small, like a five-tonne truck, or something like that, that’s enclosed, that you could just load them in and put some bars up to hold them up.”

• Anyone willing to pick up the pallets and deliver them to the camp can contact Janzen at 604-820-8665.

The company is located near The Junction Shopping Centre at 32555 London Ave. in Mission.



Colleen Flanagan

About the Author: Colleen Flanagan

I got my start with Black Press Media in 2003 as a photojournalist.
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