Maitland councillor Henry Meskauskas continues to push his campaign on feral shopping trolleys, this time calling for a stealthy night-time mission to collect and impound the grocery carriers.
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He has again raised the issue with Maitland City Council after reading how Hornsby Council used the cover of darkness to impound more than 450 trolleys left abandoned across its city centre.
Hornsby Council staff, Westfield Hornsby and its tenants have been locked in a stalemate over the responsibility of thousands of abandoned trolleys for several years — resulting in failed promises to install wheel locking mechanisms across all trolleys from businesses within the centre.
Cr Meskauskas said Hornsby Council recently decided to force retailers’ hands sending out officers to collect and impound trolleys at the council depot.
Hornsby Mayor Philip Ruddock said the move was a last resort.
“This is what we should have been doing here a long time ago,” Cr Meskauskas said.
“We need to appoint our rangers to do something similar to this – we really need to take the upper hand.
“We need to collect the trolleys, take them back to the depot at Metford, fine the supermarkets $100 and order them to pay another $100 to get them back,” he said.
Cr Meskauskas said he has put the issue to council officers and is still waiting for a reply as to whether or not he should put up a notice of motion.
“The people who are dumping these, if caught, should also be fined,” he said.
In August Cr Meskauskas said the ban on free plastic shopping bags at supermarkets had resulted in an increase in the dumping of shopping trolleys and he again urged supermarkets to pick up their game.
He said people who forget to take their bags to the supermarket, or others who refuse outright to pay for them, throw their groceries into trolleys, wheel them home or to their vehicles and then dump them.
“They’re turning up in parking areas, streets, and shopping centres. They’re on The Levee in the river, swamps, sporting ovals, in front of homes – people are just dumping them anywhere,” Cr Meskauskas said.
“Supermarkets should sink the money they make from the sale of bags into tracking their trolleys such as a gold coin security lock or a wheel lock similar to what is used in Western Australia,” he said.
“The situation is only going to get worse this time of year, probably triple, with people rushing before Christmas and too short of time or too lazy to return their trolleys to the trolley bays.
“Our residents have had enough.”
