The discarded supermarket trolley is almost an iconic symbol of the derelict urban canal. If you've ever had one of those wrapped around your propellor blades, you'll curse the lazy shopper, irresponsible yob and canalside supermarket as you spend half a summer's day sawing off the wires one by one down your weed hatch. And you'll bless the assorted annual canal cleanups from folk whose idea of a good holiday weekend is standing knee-deep in mud, dragging old trollies from bridgeholes.
Some salvation could be at hand, with the Supercart, an all-plastic supermarket trolley that could be the most garish 'retail experience' to come out of South Africa since Nando's Chicken. If they can persuade the UK's supermarkets to switch to this HDPE plastic alternative, the days of scraping your bottom on a trolley on a bridgehole or jamming your prop againsts its wires could hopefully be ending. The Supercart would (hopefully) shatter.
HDPE also has a specific gravity of around 0.96 (i.e. it floats), which would also make it much easier to recover (assuming the wheels don't add too much to the weight).
The chief drawback of this type of trolley is the execrable colours they can supply it in. On the (superbly programmed) web site they offer a mix-and-match of your own choice of eye-popping colours to rival the worst that Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, La-La and Po ever dreamed up. Can you do better (worse) than me?
But as the Supercart lady was eager to point out, supermarkets can easily commission the new trolleys in their own (likely even worse!) colours.
Please let me have your phone number
Posted by: Raiz | Monday, 24 October 2005 at 09:17 AM