Albany gets tougher on wayward shopping carts as city targets abandoned carts in creek and around town

Albany gets tougher on wayward shopping carts

Over 170 abandoned shopping carts were recently pulled from Periwinkle Creek in Albany, according to city officials. This cleanup highlights how far carts can travel once they leave store parking lots and how visible they have become in public spaces.

Carts “in the wild”

City staff describe finding carts far from the stores they came from, scattered along streets, in parks and greenways, and clustered in and around the creek. Residents report spotting them in neighborhoods, near encampments, and along popular walking routes, where the metal frames stand out against otherwise natural areas.

Why it matters to the city

Abandoned carts in waterways and public places are considered both an eyesore and a maintenance problem. They can obstruct water flow, damage vegetation, and require city crews to spend extra time and resources retrieving and disposing of them instead of doing regular park and street maintenance.

How residents experience the problem

People are asked, implicitly and explicitly, to notice where they see these carts “in the wild” as a measure of how widespread the problem has become. For many, the sight of a shopping cart outside a store parking lot now reads as a sign of neglect, nuisance, or misuse of public space rather than a harmless one-off occurrence.

Over 170 were fished out of Periwinkle Creek, according to city officials.

Author’s summary

The story shows how abandoned shopping carts have shifted from minor nuisance to visible symbol of strain on Albany’s public spaces, culminating in a dramatic cleanup of more than 170 carts from Periwinkle Creek.

Albany Democrat-Herald — 2025-11-23