Here’s why Brampton’s charging $100 to stores for every abandoned shopping cart found in the city

Brampton, Ont., has started charging stores $100 for every shopping cart they find abandoned throughout the city.

The City of Brampton approved the fee when they met to discuss the 2026 budget in February, as a measure to recover the costs and resources of collecting carts left behind in public spaces.

“It costs money for the staff to go and pick it up and store it. Now, the money, the operating costs associated with the collection of this property that belongs to the retailers, is being subsidized by property taxpayers—the same people who are complaining about the shopping carts,” Coun. Rowena Santos told CTV News Toronto in an interview.

“It’s like the property taxpayer should not be paying to collect the property, to collect the shopping carts. That’s why we’re charging a fee for cost recovery of the actual collection itself.”

The motion says the city will charge that collection fee after staff find carts left behind in public places like trails, parks, transit stops and creeks, and they can clearly determine what store that cart belongs to.

Santos presented the motion to council in September 2025, after hearing the concerns from aggrieved constituents. The abandoned carts can pose safety hazards to locals and wildlife, the motion noted.

Based on the number of local service calls Brampton receives, 400 to 500 shopping carts are found abandoned yearly in the city, though Santos notes this estimate may account for potential repeat complaints regarding the same trolley.

The councillor for wards 1 and 5 says the complaints primarily come from residents who live near the Etobicoke Creek Trail, or by the Walmart plazas near Mississauga Road and Williams Parkway, and Main Street and Bovaird Drive.

“The Walmarts in Brampton all have the locking technology with the coin, but, for some reason, they are inconsistently implementing them,” Santos said, adding how she has spoken with Walmart before about the local issue. For the stores that do not implement coin-locking or geo-fencing technology, restricting these carts to the confines of the retailers property, Santos said they have a contractor who collects the trollies.

“That’s kind of a cop out from my perspective to say, ‘Oh, we have a contractor that collects regularly.’ Okay, well, how do you know where to find them, because they’re calling 311 and then also, are you? Are you collecting it in a timely manner?” Santos said.

CTV News Toronto contacted Walmart Canada for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Council will reconvene at the end of the first quarter of the year to discuss implementing legislation mandating retailers to implement locking technology, so carts stay on their own property.