Council considering options to deal with abandoned supermarket trolley problem

Otago Daily Times

18-05-2025

By Joe Shaw of RNZ
Christchurch councillors say shopping trolleys are being abandoned on footpaths and in rivers, causing a nuisance and costing businesses millions of dollars.
Council staff responded to reports of 6313 abandoned trolleys in the city in the year to last October, more than half of which came from the country's two biggest supermarket chains - 2238 from Woolworths New Zealand and 1652 from Foodstuffs-owned Pak'nSave and New World.
RNZ has been told trolleys cost an average of $300 but could cost up to $700 each, with Woolworths spending more than $1.5 million per year on abandoned trolleys nationwide.
Abandoned trolleys were generally reported via the Snap Send Solve app and directed to the retailer who owned the trolley for collection.
On Wednesday, councillors would consider a staff report outlining regulatory and non-regulatory options for addressing the problem by either by adding a clause to an existing waste bylaw or working with Retail NZ on a memorandum of understanding.
Under that approach, they would collaborate on preventive measures and collecting and returning trolleys to stores.
Staff also canvassed distance and time limits around trolley use, including coin deposit locks and wheel locks, although they noted the coin system could easily be circumvented by inserting another item like a key into the slot and people could keep pushing trolleys with locked wheels, breaking them.
Woolworths New Zealand said it had trolley collection services to help keep streets tidy.
"We want to keep our local communities tidy and trolley-free and ensure that we have enough trolleys available in our stores. We spend over $1.5 million a year on collecting abandoned trolleys, and our contractors collect around 80,000 trolleys and return them to our stores every year," a spokesperson said.
Foodstuffs said most customers did the right thing and returned trolleys to their designated bays.
"Out of the hundreds used each week, only a small number are taken off-site. We regularly patrol nearby streets to collect abandoned trolleys, and when members of the public report one, we aim to retrieve it as quickly as possible," a spokesperson said.
"However, trolleys do occasionally go missing, and it's always disappointing when they're stolen or dumped. We encourage the public to report any misplaced or stolen trolleys so we can arrange prompt collection.''
Councillor Yani Johanson said he had once seen 10 trolleys in one street, and in one case it took more than a month and 10 complaints for a trolley to be collected.
"The people that own the shopping trolleys have a duty of care to the environment and the community to pick them up and to stop them from being abandoned in the first place," he said.
Johanson had requested the council to take a similar approach to Auckland Council, which had added shopping trolleys as a clause in its waste management and minimisation bylaw in 2019.
Councillor Aaron Keown said supermarkets and other shopping precincts should have areas beyond which trolleys cannot go, otherwise it would be treated as theft.
"I'm not allowed to walk into the store and grab six blocks of chocolate and walk out, trolleys are exactly the same," he said.
"People take this liberty that 'it's a shopping trolley, I'll just use it to get my goods home'. It's not for that, stop doing it."
Councillor Sara Templeton said trolleys were sometimes abandoned because people did not have another way to take their groceries home.
"In Ōtautahi Christchurch we have 13 per cent of adults who don't have a driver's licence. For many of them, being able to transport groceries home in another way is really valuable," she said.
"Yes, they should be taking them back afterwards, but I'm not in favour of stopping people being able to remove trolleys from business premises."
Retail NZ advocacy manager Ann-Marie Johnson said she favoured a solution involving both the council and retailers.
"Then you've got willing partners on both sides to investigate the issue, whereas if it's put into a bylaw, that can be a heavy-hitting approach," she said.