The cost of trolley theft and loss is not just the impact of the ‘steal’ but all about the cost of the steel when it comes to their replacement and the associated impact on the planet in terms of its carbon footprint.
The cost of trolley loss to UK retail business is a conservative £35 million per year, but the manufacturing of the more than one million steel trolleys that go missing every year represents a staggering 490,000 metric tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of 1.2 billion miles driven by an average passenger car.
Add to this figure the importation and storage of the trolleys (non are manufactured in the UK but come from Europe or China) and the figure leaps by another 8,175 metric tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of a further 20.5 million miles driven.
Then there is the issue of vans driving around to collect abandoned trolleys which produces a further 72,000 CO2 tonnes, a further 180 million travelled miles and, if you include store visits to repair
retrieved and broken or vandalised trolleys (approximately 15 per cent of the supermarket fleet) you are looking at a further 120,000 metric tonnes of CO2, an additional 300 million miles.
When you add all of these figures together it represents 690,175 metric tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, the equivalent of 1.7 billion car miles which makes it is easy to understand why Gatekeeper Systems’ Trolley Retention Programme (TRP) is an apt candidate for the Retail Risk Sustainability Award.
Its induction loop technology around the store perimeter literally prevents trolleys – either maliciously or non-maliciously – leaving the premises thereby retaining the asset and saving millions of pounds in lost or stolen shopping carts each year in the UK alone.
Operating on a similar technology to the Purchek wheel-locking system which prevents store push-outs of stolen items, the TRP activates in all fitted shopping trolleys and delivers a strong return on investment in terms of cost and the climate.
Each new replacement trolley ranges between £60 and £130, depending upon the size of the store and the number of trolleys on offer which generates a huge cost issue for the retail industry, particularly the grocery sector. Many are simply abandoned, but there is also a criminal value to stolen trollies that can be melted down for profit on the black market.
Despite all of these costs – financial and environmental – there is a consumer disconnect with 40 per cent of UK shoppers who do not believe there is a problem with trolley theft, according to figures from Newcastle City Council which conducted a survey despite many trolleys end up littering neighbourhood streets or causing railway obstructions or river and canal hazards. This is on top of creating brand-damaging environmental and aesthetic problems for the stores, the local authorities or BIDS charged with the clean-up.
Many stores have outsourced to trolley collection services to repair and repatriate them to retail businesses, but many local authorities still collect trolleys and issue draconian fines to stores as a means of punitive prevention that can create local unnecessary tensions between the authority and the retailer. Either way, such services fall to the retailer to pay for.
While locking trolleys together through coin or token release has a modest impact on retention levels, there is nothing to prevent the trolley being wheeled away except Gatekeeper’s TRP which works as a preventative measure that, as an agnostic technology, does not profile potential thieves but simply locks the wheels when they attempt stray beyond the curtilage or wider footprint of the store. In this way, it is a totally sustainable solution that increases efficiencies, reduces environmental footprints and boosts community relations between stores, local authorities and residents while dramatically reducing unnecessary costs.
In this respect Gatekeeper’s retention technology operates on two levels as both a crime prevention technology through Purchek in reducing push out theft from the physical store and, via TRP, to halt the theft and loss of vital assets leaving the broader store estate and, by doing so, eliminating the need to constantly replenish trolley numbers. This is not to mention the ongoing brand-damaging reputational challenges of blotting local communities with errant shopping carts. Prevention, is always better than cure in eliminating the need and the cost of reclaiming and repatriating valuable assets as well as protecting the environment from the all-too familiar eyesore of abandoned trolleys.