[Photo Credit: Morgan Hagar Photojournalism]
Abandoned shopping carts got you down? They may provide fun playthings for the neighborhood kiddies, but most residents find them to be eyesores and hassles. It may be nice to wheel your groceries home, but the neighbors don’t like it when you ditch the cart after you’ve unloaded your bags of cat food. Something about damage to cars and feelings of living in a neglected neighborhood. Anyway, one Council District in L.A. has a new pilot program to get rid of those pesky carts:
Residents of District 6 — which covers Van Nuys, Arleta, Panorama City, Sun Valley and parts of Pacoima and North Hollywood — can call [Councilman] Cardenas' office with the location of an abandoned cart. The information is e-mailed to the Bureau of Sanitation, and a bureau staff member picks up the cart and contacts the store owner. Store owners have 10 days to pick up their retrieved carts from a Sun Valley sanitation center. Immediately after the program was launched Monday morning, six complaint calls came in and 12 carts were collected. Each day since, 60 to 70 carts have been collected, bureau supervisors Robert Potter and Daniel McKay said.Now that we can get rid of shopping carts on demand, we're hoping that over-accessorized wannabe starlets are next.
· L.A. Shops for a Solution to Abandoned Carts [L.A. Times]