Shop a Trolley

New hotline to expose environmentally irresponsible retailers

British Waterways is today calling to account many of the UK’s biggest retailers after figures show that it wastes £ 150,000 of public money every year recovering thousands of abandoned shopping trolleys from the nation’s 2,200 mile network of canals and rivers. Stacked one on top of the other, the c. 3,000 trolleys British Waterways retrieves each year would reach more than ten times the height of Canary Wharf.

A new Trolley Hotline (01923 201120) going live today will allow members of the public to report sightings of abandoned trolleys in British Waterways’ canals and rivers. This information will be used to help recover trolleys, to map hotspot areas and to identify a league table of the nation’s least and most environmentally responsible retailers. Later in 2009, a ‘Golden Trolley Award’ will be presented to the retailer showing best environmental management of its trolleys, while an ‘Off Your Trolley Award’ will be presented to the least environmentally responsible retailer.

The humble shopping trolley has for a long time been synonymous with unloved and decaying canals. But despite a recent dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of the nation’s waterways, now enjoyed by more than 11 million people each year, the 320* supermarkets located close to British Waterways’ canals and rivers are still not doing enough to keep their trolleys in their stores and out of the water. In a recent survey** 86% of people thought that the supermarkets which own the trolleys should foot the bill to retrieve and return them.

Robin Evans, British Waterways chief executive, comments: “Shopping trolleys are symbolic of the mindless pollution that takes place along our canals and rivers every year and quite frankly we are fed up with having to clean up after other people. The annual cost of recovering the trolleys, which equates to just 18 minutes of profit from the UK’s leading retailers***, is money that we would otherwise spend on much needed maintenance and repairs to the nation’s historic waterways.

“Whilst some retailers have taken real steps to clean up their act, there remains a problem with thousands of dumped trolleys in our waterways each year. You would think that supermarkets have a vested interest in not losing their trolleys, but it seems they just write many of them off each year rather than actually tackling the issue.”

The initiative is supported by the Inland Waterways Association (IWA), the leading inland waterways charity. Clive Henderson, chairman of the IWA comments: “The waterways are attractions for the whole community to enjoy. They should be kept free of litter and some of the country’s biggest household names should be doing more to protect the nation’s waterway environment. Abandoned shopping trolleys are unsightly, costly to remove, and spoil the outlook for the millions of people who visit the waterways each year. They also cause costly damage to boats. Removal of these trolleys would also have a wider beneficial effect for the waterways. There is evidence to suggest that an improved environment changes behaviour. So the problem of general littering, dumping and other antisocial behaviour might well reduce as a result of trolley removal.”

In addition to the launch of the Trolley Hotline, British Waterways has written to each of the main retailers asking them to enter into a not-for-profit cost recovery agreement for shopping trolleys that BW recovers on their behalf.

Robin Evans explains: “We’re realistic that retailers want to balance trolley loss against the customer experience. And whilst some supermarket customers will always be intent on abandoning trolleys away from a store, there are a number of effective measures that can be better implemented that make both good business as well as environmental sense. There is also clearly much more the supermarket chains can do to take more responsibility and contribute towards the environmental cost of clearing their trolleys.”

Members of the public can log a sighting of an abandoned trolley in a British Waterways canal or river by phoning the Trolley Hotline on 01923 201120 or visiting www.britishwaterways.co.uk/trolley.