Brampton, Ont., has started charging stores $100 for every shopping cart they find abandoned throughout the city.<\/p>\n
The City of Brampton approved the fee when they met to discuss the 2026 budget in February, as a measure to recover the costs and resources of collecting carts left behind in public spaces. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt costs money for the staff to go and pick it up and store it. Now, the money, the operating costs associated with the collection of this property that belongs to the retailers, is being subsidized by property taxpayers\u2014the same people who are complaining about the shopping carts,\u201d Coun. Rowena Santos told CTV News Toronto in an interview. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like the property taxpayer should not be paying to collect the property, to collect the shopping carts. That\u2019s why we\u2019re charging a fee for cost recovery of the actual collection itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
The motion says the city will charge that collection fee after staff find carts left behind in public places like trails, parks, transit stops and creeks, and they can clearly determine what store that cart belongs to.<\/p>\n
Santos presented the motion to council in September 2025, after hearing the concerns from aggrieved constituents. The abandoned carts can pose safety hazards to locals and wildlife, the motion noted.<\/p>\n
Based on the number of local service calls Brampton receives, 400 to 500 shopping carts are found abandoned yearly in the city, though Santos notes this estimate may account for potential repeat complaints regarding the same trolley. <\/p>\n
The councillor for wards 1 and 5 says the complaints primarily come from residents who live near the Etobicoke Creek Trail, or by the Walmart plazas near Mississauga Road and Williams Parkway, and Main Street and Bovaird Drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Walmarts in Brampton all have the locking technology with the coin, but, for some reason, they are inconsistently implementing them,\u201d Santos said, adding how she has spoken with Walmart before about the local issue. For the stores that do not implement coin-locking or geo-fencing technology, restricting these carts to the confines of the retailers property, Santos said they have a contractor who collects the trollies. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s kind of a cop out from my perspective to say, \u2018Oh, we have a contractor that collects regularly.\u2019 Okay, well, how do you know where to find them, because they\u2019re calling 311 and then also, are you? Are you collecting it in a timely manner?\u201d Santos said. <\/p>\n
CTV News Toronto contacted Walmart Canada for comment but did not receive an immediate response.<\/p>\n
Council will reconvene at the end of the first quarter of the year to discuss implementing legislation mandating retailers to implement locking technology, so carts stay on their own property. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brampton, Ont., has started charging stores $100 for every shopping cart they find abandoned throughout the city. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194339],"tags":[712,51759,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-515029","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brampton","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-brampton","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}