Shopping cart security tokens

[fredk]

2 hours ago, fredk said:

Its aim to stop people stealing the carts

Here is definitely this

[Klara]

Can't be that because if you really want or need a cart, you pay the Euro, Pound or whatever. Since they mostly cost over a hundred Euros when bought new.

(It's that example that makes me ask in places with a deposit on beakers whether it's ok to keep it. For people in other parts of the world: Germany and France (and probably others, but I stick to what I know) try to reduce plastic waste and at events where you'd have gotten your drink in a disposable plastic cup, you nowadays get a reuseable one which you are supposed to take back to the counter and they'll return the deposit. Except sometimes the cups/beakers/whatever have really nice pictures printed on them and make useful souvenirs and so people keep them. Which at 1 Euro per plastic cup is ok, as far as I've asked... At the soup festival it even was ceramic cups, but for 2 Euros I believe. A potter must have gotten rid of her overstock...)

Edited Saturday at 09:18 AM by Klara
Info added

[AlZilla]

Well, thanks for all that shopping cart and drink cup information.  I could see it working. In my part of the world, our politicians outlawed plastic shopping bags and mandated a 5 cent fee for paper bags. Some people go to all sorts of lengths to avoid "paying" for grocery bags. It's become quite a bone of contention.

[chuck123wapati]

11 hours ago, fredk said:

Here is definitely this

Wouldn't they just put the coin in and steal the thing??? 

[fredk]

We are hijacking this thread. I'll ask for this discussion to be moved

In the mean time; if honest shoppers return their cart to the cart park to get their coin back it stops there being a lot a loose carts in the car park which are easy pickings for the thieves. In the UK scrap metal gets a good high price, so if you can get the metal for nothing, ie steal it, you're 'quids in' as we say

I was just reading that in area of England thieves stole £100,000 of electric cable which is part of a railway electric system. The trains can't run until its replaced. I've known thieves to have stolen a 15t bridge! as well as man-hole covers, the plaques on war memorials, a town's metal public artwork and so on

Some shops have tried a self-locking wheel on the cart. It locks up when the cart tries to go out of certain area but that didn't stop the thieves, they just lifted the cart away,  so they went back to the coin operated chain lock. Of course most regular shoppers keep a 'trolley token' on them because it happens you never have that £1 coin on you when you need it

Over here paper shopping bags are rare but free. The plastic bags range from 40p/50c  to about £1/$1.25 but plastic bags used by butchers and greengrocers are free. Nearly every one has a 'bag for life', about £2 to £4, that they use all the time for their shopping

Edited Saturday at 05:07 PM by fredk

[Cumberland Highpower]

1 hour ago, AlZilla said:

Well, thanks for all that shopping cart and drink cup information.  I could see it working. In my part of the world, our politicians outlawed plastic shopping bags and mandated a 5 cent fee for paper bags. Some people go to all sorts of lengths to avoid "paying" for grocery bags. It's become quite a bone of contention.

Wow that's a bummer.  

I like the idea of less plastic/bags blowing in the wind or gathering up in your backyard creek or parking lot...But hate to see mandates. Should be a consumer choice.

Sometimes when I hear things like this, I feel a little privilege to live in such a backwards place as I do.

What's the 5 cent paper bag fee used for?  

 

Edited Saturday at 04:59 PM by Cumberland Highpower

[AlZilla]

6 hours ago, Cumberland Highpower said:

What's the 5 cent paper bag fee used for?  

Nothing. The retailer keeps it to partially cover the cost of the paper sack. It's just a punishment meted out by the enviro-crowd political class for people who refuse to carry their nasty, dirty reusable bags in and out of the grocery store.

To be clear, micro-plastics is the first environmental "crisis" I've ever bought into and I'm completely on board with reducing plastic in the environment. I don't need to be punished into it.

Edited Saturday at 11:31 PM by AlZilla

[Klara]

What I find funny is that Germany tried to replace plastic shopping bags by fabric ones (washable, btw, no reason for them to be dirty) when I still lived there, over 25 years ago. When I arrived in France in 2001, supermarkets gave you plastic bags whether you wanted them or not. By now you must pay for them (or pick up the really crappy ones in the vegetable aisle). I don't even know whether that's a government mandate, or whether shops discovered that they can not only make money with shopping bags, but also sell more small garbage bags (because that's what plastic shopping bags became in most households). 

@fredk  I don't get stealing a bridge. If you are willing to work so hard - can't you find an honest job?  Though several years ago our village was cut off from the phone system because someone had stolen the cable...

[fredk]

Here the tax on plastic bags is allegedly used for 'green' or environment projects such as tree planting. But we, the public we, see very little of its supposed beneficial use so I suspect it goes into the general government coffers

But it has reduced the use of the flimsy thin plastic bags by about 95%. We no longer see lots of them hung up in trees or bushes at the road side, and fewer being eaten by cattle and sheep 

[fredk]

Pre-nuclear age metal is highly desirable. At the time scrap iron was very valuable.  The bridge was from the 19th century.  It served only about 10 homes on one side of the river. A gang dismantled it and took it away. Within 1/2 hour of that area you can be in another country - untouchable to the law.

The local police saw it happening but the gang were wearing hi-viz jackets, had signs erected, powerful work lights on as it was night time. Everything indicated that it was on the level. So police ignored it.