Trolley plague continues to haunt Brisbane
April 29, 2009 by Linsey Rendell
Filed under Latest, News
The Brisbane City Council is calling for action from interstate grocery chiefs to put a stop to the rogue trolley plague menacing the city.
Over the past six months, Council has been trying to convince supermarket giants to clean up the community, but so far Lord Mayor Campbell Newman has seen no action.
Trolleys from Coles, Woolworths, Supa IGA, Big W and other stores are being collected by council workers at dawn each morning if they’re spotted discarded around Brisbane.
Almost 4,000 are piling up in Council depots around the city, with 1,500 impounded in the last month alone.
The Lord Mayor says they’ve upped the ante in the last month, capturing more and holding them ransom.
“It is littering, it’s a blight to the city, it’s driving people nuts in layman’s terms and we need to put a stop to it,” Newman said.
He says they’re charging a release fee of $107, but supermarkets refuse to pay up, questioning the Council’s authority to hold their trolleys hostage.
“I appeal to them to actually talk to their local management and realise that this is an unnecessary cost on their business.”
Chain grocer ALDI requires a gold coin deposit to unlock a trolley, which customers get back when the trolley is returned.
Customers said they didn’t mind paying the small change for trolley usage and thought the technology should be employed at all supermarkets.
“I think for [the supermarkets’] sake it’ll probably be really nice just because then the trolleys wouldn’t leave the premises and they wouldn’t end up halfway across Brisbane,” one woman said.
“If [customers] had $2 to worry about… they’d go and put it back in the line,” a man agreed.
The deposit system is clearly working with only three ALDI trolleys among the 781 at the Zillmere city works depot today.
Council is drafting new laws to tackle the problem, which will include forcing supermarkets to introduce anti-theft measures and on-the-spot fines for taking trolleys out of their shopping precinct.
Councillor Newman says the last thing he wants is to enforce more red tape, however, unless grocery chiefs in Melbourne respond to his plea immediately, he’ll have no choice.