Cumberland Council’s trolley crackdown gets fast results
A western Sydney mayor fed up with dumped trolleys turning his community into a ghetto has given retailers a wake-up call.
Parramatta
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Cumberland’s threat to crush trolleys immediately may have been the jolt supermarkets needed to stop the streets looking like a “ghetto”.
Cumberland Mayor Steve Christou declared war on the dumped carts last week and issued a video that stated he had instructed workers to crush trolleys immediately after “lazy” retailers Coles and Woolworths ignored requests to collect them from littering the streets.
“I’m sick and tired of Cumberland being treated as a ghetto,’’ he said.
“In my opinion, if we were a north shore council, they would have been collecting the trolleys immediately.
“There are processes that we follow where we report the trolleys to the companies and try to communicate with them.
“We weren’t getting a favourable response and in some instances they weren’t taking calls. It’s been a wake-up call.”
Last Friday, council workers crushed six trolleys immediately after the zero-tolerance policy was enacted.
Since July 2019, the council scrapped 59 trolleys following impoundment.
Cr Christou said since the threat to immediately impound trolleys, retailers were retrieving the carts within two hours of council officers calling.
Suggestions for Coles and Woolworths to implement a coin-operated trolley system like Aldi uses have not been successful but Cr Christou said Woolworths had now committed to the Trolley Tracker.
The program allows the public to report stray trolleys to the council, which then relays the information to the collection contractor.
The council is also cracking down on the problem by viewing CCTV footage and rolling out an education campaign.
“The majority of residents take great pride in our community,’’ Cr Christou said.
“It’s the minority two per cent that do the wrong thing that reflects poorly.’’
The mayor named Granville, Merrylands and Auburn as trolley dumping black spots but the problem is widespread.
In November, the council voted to install CCTV cameras and barriers outside the Allan Ezzy Community Centre at Pemulwuy to stop trolleys being dumped in and around the lake.
Youths often go on joy rides in the carts in the suburb.