West Auckland resident Ethan Smith has been retrieving trolleys dumped in his local creek for months, and while some retailers have been grateful, he claims Countdown have shown no effort to curb the issue. Video / NZ Herald
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The front lawn of Ethan Smith’s home looks more like a trolley bay nowadays.
The West Harbour resident has collected more than 30 abandoned trolleys in the past month and a half, many of them fished out by him and his kids from the nearby stream.
Smith started collecting them in a bid to showcase the scale of the issue after spending years returning “hundreds of trolleys” to the Westgate Shopping Centre supermarkets.
“The whole trolley saga started about nine years ago when they installed a pedestrian bridge over the motorway,” Smith told Focus. “Over that time, trolleys have just been left out in the community.
West Harbour resident Ethan Smith. Photo / Jed Bradley.
“When I go for walks in the bush I can see these trolleys have been discarded off the bridge, into the creek, they fill up with debris, this in turn, blocks the waterway and the water has to find a way around it so it carves out the sides of the banks and it falls in. This is a big issue.”
Smith finds trolleys from Pak’nSave and the Warehouse but said most are from Countdown, with it being the closest supermarket to the bridge.
“I’ve spoken to Countdown over the years to see what we can do and I’m willing to help,” he said. “They said they took it to Head Office but there’s been no response.
“It’s got to the point that it’s became too many for me to take back so I thought okay I’m not going to go out of my way anymore for them, I’m going to take them back to my house so that they can see.”
Trolleys collected on Ethan Smith's lawn. Photo / Jed Bradley.
Smith took a photo of the trolleys stacked up in his yard earlier this month and presented it to the Countdown manager who told him he could do with them as he pleased.
Shocked by the response, Smith took to Facebook to share his story with the community.
“People need to see the size of this problem,” he said.
“If you don’t see it, you don’t know it, you don’t worry about it so we’re trying to get people to see this. This is our natural environment, our bush, the place we go to get back to nature. For me when I come down here and see this, it breaks my heart. If no one does anything about it, it’s just going to get worse.”
Smith said he’s approached the Westgate Shopping Centre management and local council, but still no action has been taken.
He’s suggested solutions as simple as putting up signage that encourages people to refrain from taking the trolleys off-site to pitching security systems that automatically lock up the wheels of a trolley when it’s taken outside the store’s property.
A Countdown spokesperson said in a statement they have offered to arrange to have their trolley collection contractor pick the trolleys up from Smith’s house.
They said they “understand abandoned trolleys can be a nuisance” and that they had “collection services to help mitigate their impact in the community.
“We have agreements with dedicated trolley collection contractors who are well versed in the health, safety and other requirements for recovering abandoned trolleys,” they added. “Our contractors respond quickly to reports of abandoned trolleys to return them to our stores and they also conduct regular sweeps for abandoned trolleys in the streets surrounding our stores.
“If a member of the public comes across an abandoned trolley, we would encourage them to reach out to our customer care team who are available to help on 0800 40 40 40, our team at the customer service desk in store, or our chatbot Olive can also organise trolley collection - just message “trolley”.
