Nearly a dozen stray shopping carts huddle near a bus stop along East Colonial Drive between State Road 408 and Alafaya Trail. Another was deserted in a nearby ditch where it collected trash and debris, clogging the drainage system to the point where it could no longer function properly.
Spots like this will likely remain home to these and hundreds of other shopping carts wheeled away from their home parking lot and abandoned — most of the time near bus stops — until the stores reclaim them (slim chance) or a good Samaritan moves them (even slimmer chance). Orange County does not have an ordinance regulating stray shopping carts so code enforcement rarely bothers with them.
“The county is in no position to run an impound lot for shopping carts. It is not that we are unconcerned but [the issue] was never raised by citizens or elected officials as something they wanted us to deal with,” said Bob Spivey, county code enforcement manager. “We are busting at the seams dealing with foreclosed homes. We are out there cutting grass, acting as the property managers of last resort.
Shopping carts can be a visual blight but it is not a huge community problem at the time.” Last year Orange County commissioners passed an ordinance regulating newly developed big-box stores. Within the measure is a provision mandating that stores with 40 or more shopping carts have a cart-control system in place. Existing stores are not required to do so.
The city is researching an ordinance that will act much like the county’s provision, but will also require that existing stores buy a cart-control system within a year of the ordinance’s passing. Orlando Code Enforcement picks up more than 300 carts a month and gets calls about stray shopping carts several times a day. Meanwhile, the county’s Spivey said they rarely get calls about the carts.
“It is a big pain,” said Orlando Code Enforcement Manager Mike Rhodes. “The amount of time our staff spends on [collecting shopping carts] is an unnecessary cost to the taxpayers, but we do hear about it a lot if we do not collect them, and not just from the citizens but from other city employees like solid waste people, street cleaners, law enforcement.
Still, it is time we could spend doing other things.” Code-enforcement officers pick up the carts, notify the owner in case they wish to retrieve them and park them in outdoor storage facilities for a certain time period before trashing them. “I think once a Walgreens manager came to pick up his cart, but effectively they are abandoned by their owner,” he said.
Businesses have formed out of the shopping-cart issue. Store managers hire shopping cart bounty hunters who roam the city picking up stray carts for them. These “entrepreneurs” have offered their services to the city on multiple occasions. Albertsons grocery stores have no cartcontrol system in place, but send out teams every two weeks to recover missing shopping carts. “So far we have been able to manage carts pretty well and consumers seem to be pretty happy with what we have in place,” said Albertsons spokesperson Shane McEntarffer.
Many residential complexes, especially those around the Semoran Boulevard and Curry Ford Road corridors where there is a heavy concentration of abandoned carts, have designated spots for residents to park their shopping carts in an effort to organize the problem. Bounty hunters or store managers pick them up periodically.
Shopping carts cost upwards of $300 depending on the model. While researching the proposed ordinance, Rhodes discovered that store managers replace their entire fleet of carts every three to five years on average thanks to runaway carts. “If you look at the cost for one of those replacements, it is the same as buying a higher-end control system. It would save them money in the long run,” he said. Cart-control systems can cost anywhere from $150 to $50,000 depending on the size of the store and the sophistication of the system.
The proposed city ordinance does not specify what kind of system stores must use. “We expressed some flexibility there. I thought we were being pretty reasonable,” Rhodes said. “This is not to say it will solve the problem completely, but it will give us some teeth as far as holding these stores accountable.”
Over the last several years, Wal-Mart installed electronic cart-control systems where the cart’s wheels seize up if it is taken past a store boundary at all of its new stores. Most older stores do not have systems in place. Quenta Vettel, Wal-Mart spokesperson for Central Florida, said the company has worked closely with the county and the city, sharing with staff the benefits and success of the control system.
“You look at the cost of replacement and being a good corporate citizen and it makes sense. It helps us to pass along savings to our customers if we are not having to replace carts on a regular basis. It certainly is an expense to operations at a store,” she said. Orlando Commissioner Phil Diamond is passionate about passing this ordinance and is currently researching its feasibility.
He gets numerous complaints from constituents about abandoned carts strewn about the city, including one woman who has taken matters into her own hands. On weekends Sara Howard straps on rubber gloves and picks up trash, debris and stray shopping carts from bus stops along Semoran Boulevard and Michigan Avenue.
“The shopping carts bother me because it is like trash on the side of the road — it blights up an area. Shopping carts are supposed to be a convenience from the store to your car, not hundreds of miles from the store,” she said.
As a real estate agent, Howard also has a vested interest. “I love Orlando and I love my neighborhood, and part of it is just to be a good community person. I want this area to be attractive so people will want to live here. Abandoned shopping carts does say something about the area.”
