Box Hill: Abandoned supermarket trolleys litter the streets, apartment buildings

Trolleys are being dumped kilometres away from a Box Hill mall as nearby residents do their shopping, wheel them home and abandon them. One woman says they make the area look like a “Woolies carpark”, but even she borrows one for her groceries.

Whitehorse councillor Blair Barker has been fighting Box Hill’s abandoned trolley “crisis”.

The humble supermarket trolley is at the centre of a war being fought in two Whitehorse suburbs.

Trolleys are being left on the streets in Box Hill and Box Hill North, where they’re commonly found blocking footpaths, bike racks, even fire escapes in apartment buildings.

And it’s shoppers using Coles and Woolworths at Box Hill Central who are responsible for abandoning them up to several kilometres from “home”.

Whitehorse Councillor Blair Barker started to wage war on the wayward trolleys 18 months ago, after regularly counting as many as 40 abandoned trolleys on a 2km trip through the area.

Dumped trolleys regularly block footpaths in Box Hill and Box Hill North.

“It was at absolute crisis point,” he said. “There were trolleys everywhere.”

Cr Barker said the council sat down with Coles’ and Woolworths’ representatives to make them aware of the magnitude of the issue in Box Hill.

He said a huge breakthrough had also come from the council campaigning for residents to register abandoned trolleys on the Snap Send Solve app, alerting the supermarkets and the council of their location, so they could be collected.

Abandoned trolleys blocking bike racks.

Cr Barker said the community’s activeness in reporting the trolleys combined with the supermarkets’ increased commitment to retrieving them had massively reduced the problem.

But he’s aware the suburbs are still facing an “ongoing insurgency”.

On a private community Facebook page, a member complained the area was “starting to look like the ghetto”, with too many abandoned trolleys to report.

Another woman, Brigid Baldwin, lives 500m from Box Hill Central and said there were up to half a dozen trolleys blocking her street at any time.

“It looks like a Woolies carpark,” she said. “It’s shocking.”

Trolleys dumped in the gutter in Box Hill.

She finds herself returning the trolleys to the centres every couple of days, concerned those left on footpaths blocked people on mobility scooters.

Ms Baldwin said the main offenders responsible for the abandoned trolleys weren’t young people messing around, but people who didn’t drive and couldn’t pay for their groceries to be delivered.

She said many people — including herself — found it difficult to carry their shopping bags home so took the trolleys, but she always returned them.

“If you can push it to your place, you can push it back,” she said.

Cr Barker said trolleys were being left in apartment buildings on Watts and Bruce streets, where residents were taking trolleys up to their units in the lifts then disposing of them in fire escapes.

Whitehorse Council has been urging people to stop taking trolleys home.

A person takes their shopping home in a trolley.

Ms Baldwin suggested a subsidised community grocery delivery service could help reduce the problem.

Cr Barker said the issue was “a real challenge from an educational perspective”.

“This is our residents doing this,” he said.

Cr Barker said the council had been encouraging people to return trolleys through mailbox drops, signs, and notices in newsletters and Whitehorse Leader.

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Frustrated residents have been asking why the supermarkets don’t install automatic lock systems on trolleys to stop them being taken from the centre.

Coles spokeswoman Meg Rayner explained the electronic wheel lock system was not suitable for the layout of the Box Hill store.

Ms Rayner and a Woolworths spokesman, who did not want to be named, said their companies invested significant money in collecting the trolleys.

The Woolworths spokesman said the company understood abandoned trolleys were a nuisance and had contractors return reported abandoned trolleys to stores within 24 hours.

“They also conduct regular sweeps for abandoned trolleys in the streets surrounding our stores.”