Kokua Line

By June Watanabe

Thursday, January 22, 1998

By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
It looked like a cart return station, but this was actually a row of abandoned carts on Puuhale Road near Hau Street last week.

Retrieving shopping carts
big headache for grocers

We work near Puuhale Road, where street people dropping off materials at a recycling plant leave their shopping carts. There are more carts there than at some stores! We've called each store. But after three months, many carts are still here. Can you help?

Many of the two dozen or so carts we saw last week were very far from home!

The nearest Safeway Store, for example, is on the Pali Highway, while the nearest Star Market is in Kamehameha Shopping Center. Taken carts are a major headache for grocers.

We called Star and Safeway, since most of the carts belonged to one or the other. Both promised to retrieve their carts.

Safeway District secretary Janice Koelkebeck said she called the Pali store when she took a complaint last week.

Depending on the stores, some retrieve the carts themselves or hire a retrieval company, she said.

At Star, a company vehicle regularly goes out to pick up carts, said spokesman Keith Aragaki. A sweep of the neighborhood around a Star Market is made once a week.

"At some of the stores, where we lose quite a bit of carts, someone goes out five days a week. It is very labor intensive," Aragaki said.

The manager at C.M. Recycling on Puuhale Road acknowledged the problem and said he was willing to help resolve it.

"But what can I do?" he asked.

Contact him if the problem persists to see if you can work together on this.

Technically, property owners are supposed to be responsible for keeping abutting sidewalks clear. But in cases like this, where there are names attached to the carts, the city Building Department will contact cart owners, said housing code chief William Deering.

Call Deering at 527-6308.

Sometimes, the matter will be referred to police, he said. If the carts are on the street, as is the case of a bunch of carts along 1624 Fern St. pointed out by another reader, it is police jurisdiction.

Mahalo

To everyone, strangers as they were, who helped me when I stumbled and fell at the Windward Mall parking lot on the evening of Dec. 20. A young man immediately contacted the security guard and returned with wet paper towels to apply on my forehead. Also, to the man who left his name with the guard as a witness. Paramedics tended to my wound and sent me to the hospital in an ambulance. I had six stitches on my forehead and am doing very well. -- M. Chun