The Saga of the Abandoned Shopping Cart

Have you ever noticed abandoned shopping carts lingering around street corners or stuck in ditches? If they are left too long, they will end up in the river; like everything else that litters our streets and ditches.

Once they are in the river, they can trap and hurt fish or other creatures. Submerged shopping carts can also be dangerous to swimmers and boaters when they are in shallow waters.

Scuba divers are able to remove them from the river but this takes a lot of time and work, and they are not able to recover all the dangerous hazards.

Shopping carts do not belong in the river. Our challenge is to prevent them from getting into the river in the first place. We need a campaign against abandoned shopping carts. It looks something like this:

Abandoned Shopping Cart Campaign

• Return shopping carts to the store after you have used them; don’t abandon them in the parking lot.

• When you are going into a store and you see a shopping cart rambling around the parking lot, grab it and escort it back to the store with you.

• Do not take shopping carts off the store property.

• If you find an abandoned shopping cart on the street or in a ditch, try and get it back to the store.

• If you cannot get it back to the store yourself, take a picture of it and call the store to let them know where it is. Hopefully they will pick it up.

• Spread the word about how dangerous shopping carts are when they end up in the river.

Ollie, Rita and the Great River Community are thankful for your help in keeping their home a safer place to live and play.