New York
CNN
—
Santa Fe, New Mexico, paid a local contractor $47,000 to round up about 3,000 shopping carts around the city in 2021 and 2022.
Fayetteville, North Carolina, spent $78,468 collecting carts from May 2020 to October 2022.
Shopping carts keep wandering away from their stores, draining taxpayers’ coffers, causing blight and frustrating local officials and retailers.
Abandoned shopping carts are a scourge to neighborhoods, as wayward carts block intersections, sidewalks and bus stops. They occupy handicap spots in parking lots and wind up in creeks, ditches and parks. And they clog municipal drainage and waste systems and cause accidents.
There is no national data on shopping cart losses, but US retailers lose an estimated tens of millions of dollars…
