So, there is a new supermarket development in Erskineville (maybe that’s spelt wrong, not sure, but I’m sure I don’t care) where they’ve actually banned shopping trolleys, now when I saw this story on the news last night I just assumed that they meant you wouldn’t be able to leave the supermarket with the trolley. Well, no, it’s more than that, they’re banned entirely, you can’t even wheel them around inside the shop.

And it’s not the fact that they’ve banned them that annoys me, it’s more to do with the reasons they’ve given for why the “proposal” by local residents was accepted. They say that by removing trolleys that people won’t be able to purchase more than they can carry (well, yes, that’s true) and as a result of this they won’t need to fill their car which will reduce their carbon footprint (this on the other hand is absolute bullshit).

They justify it by saying that because people will only by what they carry, that they’ll be able to just walk home with the groceries. That’s fair if you only live five minutes from your supermarket, but that’s not the case for everyone.

And what if you’re shopping for a whole family, and you live 10km from the supermarket? Instead of making maybe one trip to the supermarket every week or so (ie. one earth-killing, carbon producing, car trip) you would potentially have to make two, three or more trips, just because you are unable to get everything you need in one trip (ie. More carbon emissions). See where their argument fails?

Now before some smart-arse points it out, I’m well aware that you could always do a couple of trips back and forth between your car and the supermarket during the same trip, thus keeping the total number of car trips to just one, but that’s going to be just as painful and inconvenient. You could even call it an inconvenient truth.

The only legitimate ‘environmental’ concern that they mentioned was the number of trolley that end up getting dumped or left in random places because some people are just to lazy to take them back to the supermarket once they’re done with them.

I can think of a could of solutions to this without the need to ban all trolleys. You could charge a small amount for the use of a trolley ($2), which would then be refunded when you returned the trolley. Or… You could attach a security device to the trolley that activates when it exceeds a certain distance from its place of origin… and then proceeds to electrify the trolley and the person holding onto it. There you have it, the perfect deterrent for stealing trolleys.

Ergo. The banning of the trolley is silly. On the other hand the banning of smoking in public in Warringah is a fucking brilliant idea, in case you weren’t aware.

This rant brought to you by my iPad, which was fun, should do that more often.