Rescued: 7 Carts, Utah, United States

The weather has changed since my last cart wrangling excursion.

See those white orbs in this first picture? Those are snowflakes caught in the flash of my camera! It was a light snow, though. Nothing really got in my way.

It was slim pickin's around the apartment complex for carts this morning--just four. I can't really complain about that. It's possible that means fewer people are bringing their carts home with them after they go shopping. Somehow I doubt that, but it is possible. I started by cleaning the leaves out of the grocery store cart and the dollar store cart before returning them. I also took along a bag of paper waste to drop in the paper recycling bin near the grocery store.

I picked up this one on my way back from dropping off the first two. It belongs to the pet store, which is at the far back corner of this shopping center, but someone had abandoned it all the way out here, by the stop light.

I had to wait until the traffic had cleared before taking this picture. I get strange looks when I cross at the intersection with a line of shopping carts in front of me, but I get suspicious looks when I'm photographing the carts.

This picture is a lesson in perspective for all you artists out there. This cart belongs to FYE, which is the tiny building across the street and halfway across the parking lot. The cart isn't really more than ten times the size of its store. It's large because some inconsiderate shopper left it in the foreground.

Streetcorners, next to the electrical switch box--that's where carts belong! Not in the stores, not in the cart corrals, not even in the parking lots. Those rugged wheels were undoubtedly made for bounding over curbs and cruising up grassy hills!

This poor cart was left to watch the traffic going by for nearly two weeks before I was able to get to it.

This last picture is the fourth cart from those I found in the usual place this morning. It was my last rescue, but it appears that I was too late. It had been injured somehow. Still, I took it back to its store where perhaps the professional cart wranglers can put a cast on its broken parts or give it a prosthesis or something. And, as if to add insult to injury, the promotional text printed on the inside of the cart has a grammatical error (aside from the obvious lack of punctuation). Can you find it?

Rescued: 12 Carts, Utah, United States

I don't understand why I get such dirty looks from some drivers while I'm returning these shopping carts, unless they somehow think I'm the one who took them away from the stores to begin with.

This morning's trip started with this set of carts. My neighbors have, for the most part, started lining the carts up, which is good because then it's easier for me, but it's also a bad sign that they now expect me to take the carts back.

I mentioned in a previous post that one cart had been thrown on top of some others to make room for a car, and it was still there. That was annoying enough, but then I discovered something...

It was injured. Crippled, even. Somehow, it's front two wheels had disappeared. Whether they were broken off accidentally or deliberately, stolen or thrown away, I don't know. I couldn't find them anywhere.

I still managed to take the cart back. I was able to nest it with another of its kind, and they still rolled smoothly like that. I took them into the grocery store to which they belong and pointed out the injury to the first cashier I saw there, so I hope it's going to get treatment. Unfortunately, this means that the store has either replace the cart or pay at least a little something for a repair, and that certainly can't help keep prices down.

This cart was hiding in the bushes almost as far away from its home store as it could get without crossing a major street or freeway. It had a weatherbeaten flyer from that store still in it, and the sales advertised were good from September 20 through September 26. I pass this spot about every other day, and I didn't see the cart there until yesterday. I wonder where it had been all that time.

These carts were all on the south end of the shopping center. The one green one was just a few feet from its store, so I didn't count it as a rescue. The three blue ones belonged to a store in the center of the shopping center. The bent and dented steel one had come from the far north end. It had been there for quite some time as well and was beginning to rust in places. Pushing it to its home was a bit of a challenge.

And finally, I found this curiosity. It was in the cart return at the grocery store three parking lots and a street away from its store. That wasn't any more annoying than any of the others. What I want to know, though, is this: Who thought that would be a good place for a lost hubcap?

Rescued: 13 Carts, Utah, United States

This morning, i decided to make another attempt at removing all those carts from the previous post. I figure that if I can clear them all out, the neighbors will be hesitant to abandon another cart there because it would be marginally embarrassing to be the person to leave just one cart. I think it's more likely, though, that they'll see that all of the carts have been taken away, and they will assume that they can leave more carts there because someone will come along and take them away.

It's a losing battle, but I'm going to keep fighting.

Where two days ago I found one cart, today I found two.

It's clear from this picture that the number of carts had diminished since the pictures I took on Thursday. Unfortunately, someone had been undermining my efforts. Another cart or two had been added to this mess, and one of the little carts had been thrown on top of one of the bigger ones so the owner of that car could park.

What I found interesting, though, was that two carts had disappeared. They were the colored ones from the dollar store and a local department store. It seemed that someone else was returning carts as well. I figured it might be local employees of those stores, but I couldn't be sure. In any case, I was momentarily happy that I was not the only one doing this work.

From the carts pictured above, I returned four to Wal-Mart and six to the grocery store. I picked up one more for the grocery store that had been abandoned outside a fast food restaurant in the shopping center. I didn't take a picture of that one.

I'm now taking the carts in trains of only four at a time. The rope proved to be less effective at steering the cart trains than I wanted it to be. Instead, I just wear hiking boots (to protect my feet from being run over by the cart wheels, which has happened twice now) and gloves (to protect my fingers from getting pinched and to absorb the vibrations from the wheels clattering over the cracks in the pavement).


On one trip back, I took a different route than the one I usually take and found these poor little carts, left alone behind a strip mall two parking lots away from their home store, forgotten in the shadows behind stores that simply did not use their rear doors very often. They looked lonely, so I took them home.

Again, I wasn't able to collect all the carts I wanted to, but I did make a difference.

This evening, as I returned home, I noticed that two carts had joined ten or so I had to leave at the dumpster. They were both colored. One was from the dollar store; the other was from the department store. I don't know if they were the same carts that I had earlier thought had been returned, but there they were. Regardless of how they got there, I was annoyed.

Sometime next week, I hope to return the rest.

Rescued: 10 Carts, Utah, United States

Because of some recent schedule changes, my cart-collecting expeditions are now happening just a little earlier in the morning. I've found that the people driving through the shopping center don't like to wait for pedestrians, let alone pedestrians pushing a train of shopping carts across the street, so I try to get my work done before too many people take to the roads. And the seasons are beginning to change, which makes the sun rise later. Part of this 90-minute cart session was in the dark.

It started simply enough. I found one of the local grocer's smaller carts sitting near a dumpster. It had been on the lawn the day before, so this was a bit of an improvement.

When I got to the main entrance to the apartment complex, I found two more of the little carts and a Wal-Mart cart at the head of this parking space. I also found two empty boxes (one for frozen food and one for cereal) hung on the tree as some kind of decorative tribute to laziness and apathy. But it's the next picture that showcases what I (voluntarily) had to deal with.

Yeah. That's not a hallucination. I don't have PhotoShop. That's real. That's nearly 30 shopping carts, all crowded around and behind the dumpster, and all approximately half a mile from their home stores.

Let me show this atrocity again from another angle. It's a whole line of carts of mixed origin, all unceremoniously smashed together and nearly all holding some piece of trash. The garbage collectors could not get the forks of their truck into the sides of the dumpster to lift and empty it. The dumpster doesn't fit in its little alcove either because of all the carts, which means that drivers have to dodge it and that trash is more likely to spill into the roadway.

I was appalled. I collected as many of these as I could. Because of an appointment this morning, I couldn't do as much as I wanted, but I did get a total of ten carts returned all the way to Wal-Mart.

The ten carts included this one, hiding in the bushes on the side of the road.

Sighted: 1 Cart, Utah, United States

Once again, I wish I had a picture of this one. Actually, I do, but I used my cell phone, and I lack the software to transfer the picture to the computer.

I went for a walk along a nearby trail this morning. It was cool and pleasant, and I was amused by the ducks paddling about in the river. Then I saw something metallic sticking out of the water on the near bank. As I got closer, I could see that it was a Wal-Mart shopping cart. Drowned.

Sighted: 4 Carts; Rescued: 2 Carts, Utah, United States

This morning, I had to take the car to the repair shop. I took a picture of the latest cart abandoned near my apartment.

The neighbor's kids had been playing in this one throughout the previous day, using blankets to make it into a kind of tent. I have to admit that, in a way, it was cute.

I had to leave my car at the shop for the day, and, still having to go to work and take care of some other things, I walked home. On the way, I found this cart. Obviously, it belongs to a K-Mart. The only K-Mart I know of is almost three miles away from this parking lot. I couldn't return this one, but I have to wonder just how it ended up here.

I also found these two carts resting under a tree. One was only one parking lot away from home, and it was on my way, so I could return it without risking being late for work. I'm hoping that the previous evening's wind blew this cart over. I'd hate to think that someone deliberately knocked it down that way.

Notice the car in the corner of this picture? It was occupied. A woman was sitting in the driver's seat, waiting for something. She gave me some very strange looks as I took out the camera to document some shopping cart abuse. She gave me an even stranger look when I returned one of the carts.

While two carts, though far from home, enjoyed the shade of a tree, one other cart was not so lucky. It had toppled over somehow and was left helpless in a parking lot desert.

I returned this cart as well. It's home store was on my way home to get my stuff for work.

Rescued: 14 Carts - Utah, United States

My neighbors made it relatively easy for me this morning. They'd collected all the carts around the front dumpster again, so I didn't have to do much hunting.

That black cart in the foreground of this first picture caused me some problems, though. It had been wedged between a concrete curb and the side of the dumpster, and it probably happened when the garbage collectors tried to slide the dumpster back into place. After a bit of a wrestling match, I did manage to wriggle the cart free.

On the way to the dollar store to drop off their two carts, I got a few dirty looks from some drivers (I have to push the carts on the edge of a short suburban street because I can't get them up onto the sidewalk for 100 yards or so) and picked up two more grocery store carts.

The manager of the dollar store was just arriving to set up her store for the day when I came by with two carts for her. She apparently recognized me from last time and thanked me. Then, in that parking lot, I collected two more grocery store carts that had been pushed up onto the decorative dividers and were smashing some of the plants.

This was my longest train of carts so far. I'm not employed in retail anymore, and I never had to do much cart wrangling anyway, so this was a big undertaking for me.

Lacking any specialty equipment, I use a rope as reins to steer these things.

This cart belonged to a pet store. It was left between a grocery store and a fast food restaurant about one-third of a mile away from the pet store. And someone (or several someones) decided that an abandoned cart should count as a trash can, too. I found soda bottles, a cigarette box, a burger wrapper, and some crumpled receipts. Well, better in the cart than on the ground, I suppose.

Behind the grocery store. They actually collect the carts that wind up in this little alcove, so I didn't rescue that one, but I had to take a picture of the scene as I began humming, "One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just isn't the same." I'll let you readers decide: which of these three items (toilet, dumpster, shopping cart) doesn't fit with the others and why?

This was my last stop for the day. I've picked up carts here before, but at least they were a little more organized this time.

Sighted: 1 Cart - Utah, United States

A couple mornings ago, as I was taking out the trash, I saw a cart in the parking lot of my apartment complex. It was near the fence that separates the complex from the freeway. I didn't have time to do anything about it right then, but I planned to come back for it later.

The next day, the cart had disappeared, so I figured it had been moved by either the maintenance guys or some of the neighbors' kids (I've seen them playing in and with the abandoned carts from time to time). This morning, however, I found that it had suffered a worse fate. Someone had picked it up and heaved it over the fence.

That's a tall fence, and the cart is one of the largest and heaviest standard shopping carts I've encountered around here, so getting it over the fence would not have been a small feat.


Still, I can't see how anyone would think that imprisoning the cart like this was somehow a good thing. It's no longer an obstacle in the parking area, but what was a minor nuisance has been made into litter that is large, significantly wasteful, and difficult to remove.

I can't do anything about this cart. It's buried in weeds that would send me into allergic fits, and to get to it without climbing over the fence would involve walking down the side of a busy freeway. Perhaps the state Department of Transportation can do something about it when they do their maintenance or during the next round of road construction.


Now all I can do is reach my camera over the fence to document the tragedy. The doomed cart lies in the weeds, wheels dangling uselessly in the air, staring forlornly upward as it rusts in the rain.

Sighted: 1 Cart, Utah, United States

I wish I had a picture of this one.

I was walking home when I encountered an interesting sight. I saw one man walking down the sidewalk toward the apartment complex. He was pushing his friend in a wheelchair, who genuinely looked like he was unable to walk great distances. That would have been nothing out of the ordinary. But the friend in the wheelchair was pushing a shopping cart in front of him, which essentially meant that the man walking was pushing both the wheelchair and, indirectly, the cart as well. In the cart were two grocery bags, and neither of them looked more than half full.

I just want to know one thing: Why?

Rescued: 1 Cart - Utah, United States

Beck found this cart while on a field trip in the Salt Lake area earlier this year. Looks like he picked it up at a UTA station.

I can't tell what store it came from, but if Beck found it where I think he found it, it was certainly a long way from home.

Nothing wrong with putting the cart to work hauling backpacks before returning it to its store. And by the smiles in these pictures, I think it's safe to say that cart rescuing can even be fun.

Thanks, Beck!

Rescued: 10 Carts - Utah, United States

Wednesday morning, I decided to make another excursion to rescue some shopping carts. Sadly, due to time constraints, I was not able to rescue every cart I found, but I like to think that this was a successful trip. I was surprised to find only two next to the front dumpster in the apartment complex, but I found plenty in the wrong parking lots.


Believe it or not, two differently sized carts from two very different stores were able to fit together so I didn't have to put the small one inside the big one.


These three were behind a grocery store, near their recycling bins. The one that belonged to the grocery store had some trash in it, which I cleaned up. The other two are Wal-Mart carts, which is across a very busy street. Even at a light with a lit crossing signal, it was surprisingly difficult to get the cars turning in front of me to stop long enough for me to push two carts through the crosswalk.

While returning the two carts to Wal-Mart, I actually watched a cart as it was abandoned by a bus stop in front of the store. A man with no obvious disabilities used it to take his one bag of groceries to the bus stop and just left it on the sidewalk. I retrieved that one, too.


On the way back from Wal-Mart, I found this dollar store cart next to the grocery store's gas station. To get there, it had to go through three very large parking lots and around the grocery store.


And this one was at the rear of the grocery store, between two of its four loading docks. It's a wonder it wasn't crushed by one of the trucks.

I then found a tiny cart that belonged to a tiny organic foods store. They only have three carts, which means that this soldier comprised a full third of the store's force. I like to think I helped a small business owner by returning that one, though I must have made an amusing sight. The cart was so small, I had to stack it inside a larger grocery store cart that I was simultaneously returning. I got several strange looks from drivers passing me on the roadway.


This is the grocery store cart that, after I cleared out the fast food trash, helped me return the tiny organic foods cart.


And I just had to return for this poor thing, abandoned nearly upside down on the street corner, not even close to a bus stop or its home store.

Rescued: 19 Carts - Utah, United States

This was my first official cart rescue on April 14, 2009. I took pictures of most of it.

I live in an apartment complex behind a shopping center. My neighbors like to bring their shopping home in the carts from the stores in that shopping center, which is fine by me, but they seldom bother to return the carts.


This is a Wal-Mart cart. To get it back to Wal-Mart, I had to haul it out of the complex and through the shopping center, find an intersection where I could cross a six-lane road, and take it up the sidewalk to the Wal-Mart parking lot. According to Google Maps, that's almost three-quarters of a mile.

The really sad part about this one is that this cart had been wandering around the apartment complex for a few days before I got to taking it back. You see it in the picture above upright near one of the apartment buildings. The day before, it was sideways on the grass near that tree. The day before that, it was sideways in the dirt about 20 feet to my left from where I was standing when this picture was taken. That means someone (or some people) actually took the time to move it those short distances. How is that helping?

After collecting this cart, I went up to the apartment complex entrance and collected several more. Not pictured are the eight dollar store carts I returned to the north side of the shopping center nearby. I then came back for these:

I connected the Wal-Mart cart from before with one I found other in a parking space near the entrance to the apartment complex.

This third Wal-Mart abductee was tucked behind the dumpster. I don't know how long the poor thing sat there holding all that trash. Obviously, the dumpster was getting full, but I still managed to make room for that pile of garbage (and, yes, I washed up when I was done with all of this).

For my third and final trip, I collected some blue carts.

These were also near the dumpster. I lined them up for a photo before taking them back to their homes.

Two of these carts are from FYE, a store that sells music, movies, and video games. I have to wonder just how much entertainment someone must have purchased to need a cart to walk it all back home... twice. The other two, were taken from Ross (a clothing store) and Bed Bath & Beyond.

On the way back with the first four blue carts, I also found these four Ross carts. This is just across the street from the apartment complex, in an alley behind the shopping center where more dumpsters were kept and where most stores had their loading docks. These carts were already lined up this way. My only guess is that someone thought they were doing a favor by arranging all the carts together or that one cart was abandoned here and other shoppers thought it was a cart collection point. Either way, I still had to get these to the front of the building and past four other store fronts to get them back to their home.

How Things Work at the Foundation

Here's how it works:

Step 1: Find abandoned shopping carts. An abandoned cart is one that has been taken--by a person moving it or by some other means such as weather--from the store to which it belongs. It must be out of its home store parking lot to count as abandoned.

Step 2: Take a picture of the cart as you found it.

Step 3 (optional): If possible, return the cart to its home store. Pictures of this activity are also encouraged.

Step 4: Email your story and/or picture(s) to me. Most of them will be published here. You will have done a good deed for your community as well as for the store and its staff, and you will be publicly recognized for it! Please indicate in your email how you would like your story credited to you--by name, by screen name, by initials, or anonymously. Also note that by submitting pictures to me, you affirm that you are not violating any copyrights and you grant me permission to post them here without making any changes to them, though you still retain ownership and all other rights to the picture.


Honorable Mentions:
If you've found a cart that's still in its home store's parking lot but that has been somehow abused, I'll happily accept pictures of it as well. An abused cart is one that has been mistreated by the customers or that has been distressed from being left outside for too long. It can be upside down, run over, or significantly damaged by weather. In an effort to end shopping cart abuse, these pictures may be published as well.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Save the Shopping Carts Foundation! No, I'm not going to ask for donations. This foundation exists to encourage people everywhere to return shopping carts to the stores to which they belong, regardless of whether it is your cart or not.

Returning a shopping cart not only keeps the community looking good, it actually helps the economy. How? Think of it this way:
The average shopping cart costs a retail store between $60 and $125.
When enough shopping carts disappear for long enough periods, store management must consider purchasing replacements.
Buying one replacement cart is the equivalent of one full shift (sometimes two) for the average part-time retail employee.
The money for that shopping cart has to come from somewhere, and the first target for cutting costs in retail is usually the labor budget.
Store managers sometimes have to cut an employee's hours just to replace equipment.

Rescuing a cart allows retail employees to keep working. When retail employees are working, the stores are kept clean, customers get the help they need, the business thrives, and the employees get to spend their paychecks with other businesses. When the employees' hours are cut, the store suffers, the customers are unhappy, and less money flows through the national economy.

So let's all help each other out. Go rescue those abandoned carts!