Dialogue: Bane of supermarkets, blight on environment

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Don't you just hate it when you get to the supermarket and can't find a decent trolley - the leftovers all suffer from wonky-wheel syndrome and get the speed wobbles at anything over a dawdle?

Would you hate it even more if you had to find a $1 coin every time you wanted to use a trundler?

If you're wondering where all the good shopping carts disappear to, take a dive into a nearby stream, or check out the inorganic rubbish collections.

Stolen trolleys are becoming a problem around the country - for both the out-of-pocket supermarkets and local councils which have to clean up the damage dumped trolleys are doing to the environment.

Some areas - such as Waitakere City - are calling for supermarkets to introduce refundable-coin-operated machines so some customers think twice about taking them home.

While the supermarkets have thought about it, none is willing to give it a go at the risk of losing disgruntled shoppers to rival stores whose trolleys are free.

New Zealand supermarkets won't say how many trolleys are whisked away each year but Foodtown division manager Dave Chambers says the number is "quite frightening".

It's a worldwide problem - in Britain, 140,000 trolleys vanish a year. Apparently that comes at a cost of £10.5 million ($32.8 million), a cost absorbed by shoppers through higher grocery prices.

But the Brits, a proud nation of shopkeepers, are doing their best to try to curb the thefts. Many have introduced coin machines, such as those you find in overseas airports these days. When customers wheel their trolleys back, they get their £1 coin refunded.

One English company is doing it a little more stealthily, investing £1.5 million in an electronic tracking device attached to the trundlers. It is now being tested by two leading supermarket chains.

Back home, stores have tried building barricades to keep the $200 trolleys in. But the bollards and speed bumps made it more difficult for wheelchairs and baby buggies to get in.

Woolworths tried the coin-operated system in one of its Auckland stores a few years ago, but shoppers showed their disgust by taking their dollars elsewhere.

"The customers complained bitterly, so we went off the idea," said spokesman Des Flynn. "We just have to go around and try to find the missing trolleys.

"Some stores have contractors who go around the streets every day to hunt them down. That's all we can do."

Foodtown runs a similar tracking system, hiring people to drive around with trailers and collect the wandering trolleys from front yards.

"If we didn't have people going out three times a week in South Auckland to pick them up, within a few weeks we'd have no trolleys left," said Mr Chambers.

"They only disappear from certain areas - usually where people don't own cars. It's not unusual to find four or five trolleys outside one house.

"We never get them all back. You find them in streams or on the beachfronts. Some are used to attack shop windows for burglaries. And then there are those that are used for general hoonery."

In West Auckland, there is growing concern about trolleys clogging up the creeks and streams - in turn hurting the fish, birds and plants that live there.

When the Waitakere City Council cleaned up the Opanuku and Oratia streams in March, there were 85 shopping trolleys lying on the riverbeds - along with 43 tyres, two bikes and a computer printer.

The council's EcoWater Solutions estimates it costs $50 a trolley to pull them out.

Says EcoWater's business systems manager Michele Grey: "It's not only about the cost to the environment but the cost to the ratepayers. The salvage costs ultimately go on everyone's rates."

Some ratepayers in Waitakere are already calling for supermarkets to be fined for every trolley retrieved.

A coin-return system seems the only viable way to slow thefts.

But if you are anything like me, gold coins disappear from my grasp like, well, trolleys from a supermarket - magically reappearing in the hand of my son for this week's school trip or maths book.

The only way it would work would be a mass introduction of the machines, by every supermarket in the country at the same time.

Or we could be rid of the much-maligned trolleys and their squeaky wheels for ever - and do our weekly shop on the internet.