Article content

If there’s one thing that drives Rick Belsher buggy, it’s abandoned shopping carts in his neighbourhood.

As a retiree and volunteer with Edmonton’s Capital City Cleanup, he keeps his corner of Clareview, on Hooper Crescent near Hooke Road, free of litter. But the carts are too big of a problem, even for him.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Abandoned shopping carts drive Edmonton man buggy Back to video

“I’ve spent 57 hours picking up 38 bags of garbage, had this area cleaned up and there’s these bloody shopping carts left all over the place,” Belsher said.

Carts from every retailer in the area end up around his home. Often, the carts come from the Wal-Mart a few blocks away.

Over the past year Belsher has fired off calls to retailers reporting wayward carts. Some stores are better at retrieving them than others. For Wal-Mart, he’s resorted to sending emails to head office to spur quicker action.

Belsher complains it’s left to him to deal with the problem instead of retailers taking the initiative. “These companies make absolutely no attempt to keep their carts on their property, but rely on citizens, mainly me it seems, to phone them about their carts.”