Shopping carts

Stu Pocknee

31 Oct 2025

general

For me, abandoned shopping carts are litter.

Am I wrong? They do seem to provide utility for some.

• Mobile storage lockers for the meagre possessions of the homeless
• Carriers of treasure to be shopped at local pawn shops
• Convenient transport for groceries if you don't have access to wheels, private or commercial

Sure, but too often they are simply left discarded and abandoned. Made to be someone else's problem.

Is it the store's fault? They don't ask for their gear to be stolen. As far as I can tell, taking trolleys off-site without specific prior arrangement is theft.

It seems harsh to blame a vendor for the questionable actions of certain customers. On the other hand, do they not have some responsibility to better secure their property if it is well known that said property is likely to be "borrowed"?

One suspects that supermarkets accept a certain amount of trolley "escape" because it is cheaper and easier than to properly police the issue. This externalizes the cost, leaving the general community to deal with the consequences.

My off-the-cuff solution: Declare them as abandoned the moment they are left unattended more than 50m from a shopping center's perimeter.

At this point they'd be fair game to be "salvaged" by any person registered by local authorities as a trolley salvager. What happens next would be up to the salvager (as long as they immediately remove them from public spaces).

• Cut them up and sell them for scrap metal.
• Remove the branding and sell them as private items on Facebook Marketplace.
• Sell them back to stores.

Perhaps then stores would do a better job of looking after their possessions? 🤷

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Further reading:

• City of Swan - Shopping trolleys ¹
• Australian shopping trolley dilemma: Carrot and Stick strategies for recovery of the ones that go missing ²
• Shopping trolleys - ACT Government ³
• Whitehorse City Council - Abandoned Shopping Trolleys ⁴

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