Lock and Load

It's amazing what fun you can find online.

Today I found this great piece on the poor an abused shopping trolley written in January by Louise Evans of The Australian:

THEY are unloved, abused, beaten and abandoned, yet we can't live without them.

They are the 21st-century equivalent of a donkey but even a beast of burden gets better treatment than the shopping trolley.
A television advertisement for NRMA Insurance was banned by the Advertising Standards Bureau because it showed boneheaded boys having shopping trolley races on a rooftop carpark and smashing their four-wheeled fun machine into a brick wall. Viewers complained the ad breached safety standards by showing "morons how to damage vehicles in car parks".

What about the damage to the shopping trolley? Just collateral.

A young mum with two nappy-wrapped screamers strapped in the back seat jumped out of her monster four-wheel-drive in fright after hearing a bang as she backed out of a small-car spot in a shopping centre car park. "Thank God it was only a trolley," she sighed as she pushed the offending tangle of metal in the direction of the escalator.

It's no wonder they all have wonky wheels, missing backs and mangled sides. The shopping trolley ranks lower on the food delivery chain than its equally abused and abandoned cousin the milk crate. At least you can sit on a milk crate.

Like all good piece of writing, there's some strong facts and figures to emerge:

• Woolworths says it loses 150,000 shopping trolleys a year to theft and damage
• It costs supermarkets $50,000,000 a year to keep shopping trolleys in adequate number in good repair

Wouldn't it be easier for shopping centre management and supermarkets to insists all trolleys have token operated locks?

Dangerous Trolleys Taken By Drunken Jerk

Theft of shopping centre trolleys may not seem like much of a crime - after all, it's just 'borrowing' a trolley to move groceries home, or to a cab rank or bus stop.

Well, as previously observed, loose trolleys are a magnet for other criminal acts such as property theft and vandalism, as well as dangerous stunts like Olly who has posted a two part 'comedy' video on You Tube.

Here's Olly's description:

This is a short guide to stealing a trolley, along with some suggestions on what to do with your trolley once aquired.
First, find a suitable supermarket thta would house a good deal of trolleys. Failing that, occasianally one may find a trolley down an alley or to the side of a poorly conditioned road.
Secondly, lift said trolley into a suitable pushing position, as many trolleys may be found on their side ot even completely upside down.
Thirdly, once your destination has been chosen, usually ones household or a nice big lake, push the trolley to this destination by placing your hands on the handlebar, and pushing in the desired direction.
Some extra tips:
Don just steal the trolley and then dump it...trolleys can be great fun when rode down a hill, or a steep road. Watch out for cars and other fun obstacles though!
Be creative...try new and inventive places to leave your trolley. You never know, you could even get artistically recognised.

While it might argued that Olly's stunt is a satirical look at what happen to unsecured trolleys, the video titled "Drunken Shopping trolley madness at the Monument Newcastle" certainly is not:

Theft On Wheels

In researching the hazards and problems surrounding shopping trolleys, I came across this interesting paper called Preventing retail crime by Susan Geason and Paul R Wilson and published by the Australian Institute of Criminology in 1992.

Here's what it had to say about supermarket trolleys and crime:

Loss of shopping trolleys
Shopping carts have a way of disappearing, especially where customers walk to the store instead of driving.

In Australia shopping trolleys cost about $200 each and most supermarkets have about $25,000 worth of them at any given time. About 5 per cent of all supermarket shopping trolleys disappear (personal communication, Australian Supermarket Institute 1991).

Shopping cart corrals: Supermarkets have dealt with trolley disappearances in a number of ways, for example many stores have installed barriers to keep carts at the customer loading zone in front of the store, though this does not stop all trolley theft.

Some markets allow customers to take carts to their cars and send employees out to scour the neighbourhood for carts people have taken home; others offer rewards for finding lost carts.

Cart corrals allow people to use carts however they want, but encourage them to return them on their own. This is how they work. A customer walks over to the cart storage area and puts a coin or a token in a device that has locked a cart to the cart in front of it. The first cart is then freed and the customer can use it in the store and the parking lot. The customer's coin is returned when he or she pushes the cart back into the cart corral.

Although that report is quite a few years ago now, I don't believe the facts will have changed over much. It's a pity that such an obvious solution, identified 16 years ago has not resulted in universal action.

Trolley Dump 4

As if to illustrate Southport councillor Dawn Crichlow's point with respect to dumped shopping trolleys is this sight, taken only two blocks away from her office.



Dumped trolleys are like graffiti - they contribute to urban pollution and appearance of general carelessness, neglect and ultimately property and personal crime.

Why this is important is articulated in the 1982 article Broken Windows, the substance of which of which the New York Mayor used to dramatically reduce crime in the city.

By addressing the small issues of vandalism, reduces petty crime and, it can be argued, stops major crime as well.

This is just another reason why shopping trolleys should be locked.

Welcome To My Trolley Hell

If there is one environmental issue that really gets my goat it's abandoned shopping trolleys.

It's the height laziness. For crying out loud, when you've unloaded your groceries, put the trolley back. It's not that hard and you might get some exercise along the way.

So why has this issue got me steamed?

1. I'm sick of having dents on my car doors from careless people leaving trolleys to roll down hill.
2. I'm sick of trolleys being dumped in my local creek by environmental vandals who've probably used the trolley to transport their ill-gotten haul as a result of their shop lifting and house breaking
3. I'm sick of trolleys being abandoned on the foot path hundred of metres away from the nearest shops by people who are too lazy to buy their own little portable trolley.
4. I'm sure doctors are sick of seeing injuries on kids who have decided to use the trolley as a billy kart or skateboard stunt accessory.

Solving this problem is so easy - lock the trolleys up!

It's can't be that difficult.

Aldis does it, Ikea does it and I've been told that some councils in Sydney and Melbourne have made it mandatory for ALL supermarkets to provide token lock shopping trolleys.

So, why should we do this?:

1. Reduce visual pollution of dumped trolleys
2. Reduce pollution caused by rusting trolleys in creeks and waterways
3. Reduce incidence of vehicle damage caused by runaway trolleys
4. Reduce injury to people who are accidentally hit by trolleys or who are injured by misusing trolleys
5. Reduce the number of vehicle movements required to pick up trolleys from around car parks and surrounding streets.

Please join me in my quest to make the streets a nicer, safer place and make the world a little more environmentally friendly.