Major supermarkets hit with charges after trolleys found ‘up tree and in river’

A council is set to hit major supermarkets in the pocket recovering dumped shopping trolleys. In Bolton, trolleys will now be removed by the authority ‘in a bid to tackle the blight of flytipping’.

Shopping trolleys are regularly taken from supermarkets and shops in the borough and abandoned in public spaces. Earlier this year, Bolton Council ran a public consultation on how it should tackle the issue. More than half of the respondents agreed that Bolton Council should adopt national legislation.

One respondent said: “We find trolleys in green spaces in rivers, bushes and even up a tree. Burnt out trolleys are also an issue as people fill them with household waste then set them on fire.”

Another who replied, said: “As litter pickers we encounter many abandoned shopping trolleys, children tend to use them to play with meaning that they drift around the place when they are not collected. Attempts to report to supermarkets usually lead to ‘we are not in a scheme to have them collected’ or ‘health and safety says we cannot collect them’.”

A storage cost of £5 per day per trolley will now apply to retailers, and a charge of £50 for the initial collection by the council will also be payable. Retailers can request the return of each trolley collected by the council for which a charge of £100 per trolley will apply in addition to the daily storage charge.

Retailers will have six weeks to collect their trolleys before they are disposed of, at the retailers’ expense. Under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, shopping trolleys can be removed and stored, and that the council can charge the retailers for doing this.

Many retailers are already signed up to a voluntary collection scheme where trolleys will be collected by specialised companies such as Trolleywise. The council has advised the public to contact these services or the relevant supermarket directly if they see an abandoned trolley in the borough.

If the trolleys are not collected, the council will remove and store them with the relevant retailer incurring the charges. Garry Parker, Bolton Council’s assistant director for environment and regulatory services, said: “Although we know it’s a small number of residents who fly tip, abandoned shopping trolleys are a blight on our landscape.

“They are an eyesore, encourage fly tipping and are damaging to the environment. We welcome these new powers and hope it encourages supermarkets to take robust action in preventing their trolleys being taken and later dumped.”