Town seeks trolley dumping answer

Shopping trolley dumping in a Lincolnshire river must stop according to a volunteer environmental group.

Rivercare Grantham says it keeps pulling trolleys from the River Witham in Wyndham park in Grantham.

About 20 members will be out this weekend with nets and grappling hooks to fish trolleys and other rubbish from the water thrown from the White Bridge.

They want supermarkets to run a scheme where customers deposit £1, and get it back when they return the trolley.

Revellers are said to get hold of the trolleys abandoned in the streets and they end up in the river, with Asda equipment proving the most popular.

David France, from Grantham Rivercare, asked: "Are they being lazy, are they simply dodging the car park charges in the town centre? I don't know their reasons but I wish they wouldn't."

Asda spokeswoman Sian Horner said: "Our customers tell us they don't like the 'pound' system."

Trolley amnesty

But she said the chain is looking for a solution to the problem

Asda has a scheme at 100 of its stores where wheels on trolleys being taken out of the store are jammed by radio waves, to keep them on site. But that costs £300 per trolley.

Asda said it has noticed it has trolley problems where there are students, in coastal areas and where the supermarket is far from homes.

It has 200,000 trolleys across all of its stores, but cannot give a figure for the number that go missing.

The Grantham store will run an amnesty, where it will donate £1 to charity for each returned trolley, and given money-off vouchers to people returning them.