Maitland councillor Henry Meskauskas will call on Maitland City Council to collect and impound feral shopping trolleys and fine their owners, when council resumes later this month.
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Council should impound these trolleys and charge the supermarkets $1000 each to release them.
- Maitland councillor Henry Meskauskas.
Cr Meskauskas said he is sick and tired of seeing feral trolleys littering the city’s streets, laneways, parks and waterways.
He said it is high time council stepped in, impounded the equipment and set hefty fines for their return.
Cr Meskauskas was commenting on a Fairfax Media report on Christmas Day which said more than 100 trolleys were found dumped at random sites across the city centre.
“These trolleys are everywhere around Maitland and I’m fed up ringing Trolley Tracker and reporting where the trolley’s are dumped,” he said.
“Council should just go around, pick them up and impound them and fine the owners $1000 for each trolley.
“How they get away with this is unbelievable. The shops just don’t seem to care,” Cr Meskauskas said.
“I’ve seen them in Telarah Lagoon, up lane ways and in parks, in car parks, reserves, on roundabouts and ovals. Everywhere you go there is a feral trolley. It’s a disgrace and some areas look like junkyards. People complain about how bad it would look if we had a kerbside pick-up, this is worse.”
In February last year Fairfax Media reported that the continued dumping of supermarket shopping trolleys in streets around Rutherford sparked calls from residents for tougher action to stop the unsightly and costly problem.
Cr Meskauskas also called for a coin operated system for all supermarkets, similar to that of Aldi’s. An Aldi spokesperson told Fairfax Media last year that the coin deposit system has been in place since 2001. The spokesperson said Aldi loses very few trolleys.
Cr Meskauskas said instead of a $2 coin deposit it should be $4 to encourage people to return trolleys.
“Businesses with in-store trolleys need to take responsibility. All they seem to be interested in is picking them up from their own car parks and don’t venture past that point.”
Cr Meskauskas’ other concern is the problem trolleys cause when discarded roadside and obstruct traffic.