Stray shopping carts a hot topic at Kitchener council

CTV Kitchener: Shopping cart crackdown Abandoned shopping carts are a hot topic at Kitchener council. Alexandra Pinto explains.

We’ve all seen shopping carts in places they shouldn’t be. Driveways. Sidewalks. Rivers.

Residents living around Fairview Park Mall have had enough of the stray carts, and have taken their concerns to city council.

Monday night, councillors were set to discuss whether they should ask businesses in the city to have a ‘shopping cart management plan’.

Coun. John Gazzola is spearheading the issue, after hearing concerns from people who live around Wilson Avenue and Traynor Avenue.

“They’re just left all over the streets and it looks really messy and junky and what have you,” says John Gazzola, the councillor for the area.

Some businesses in Kitchener already have measures in place to keep their carts on their property.

The Food Basics on Fairway Road has hired a company to retrieve their carts that have gone off property.

Both the Sobeys on Highland Road and the FreshCo on Westmount Road have systems that cause the wheels on their carts to lock up if they get too far away from the store. The problem at the FreshCo was so bad that before they started using the locking carts, they were down to just 25 carts.

Guelph, Mississauga, Ottawa, and Markham all have bylaws that say abandoned carts can be a traffic hazard, block sidewalks, and can be a risk to public safety.

They can be an eyesore, too.

“People take great pride in their properties and it doesn’t look good when you’ve got rusty, empty shopping carts lying all over the place,” says Gazzola.

With reporting from Alexandra Pinto