Rusty Grocery Shopping Carts: How safe is your food? Here’s looking at you Publix.
Rusty grocery shopping carts endanger your food and health – along with children who sit in the carts and touch the rusty edges. I recently grabbed a cart at Publix, only to find a jagged, rusty piece of the handle sticking into my palm. I called over the manager on duty – Jorge, the assistant grocery manager – who not only agreed, but offered to permanently removed the cart. (Yes, it was that bad.)
Publix offers dozens of filthy, rusty shopping carts at any given time. I line the bottom and small top shelf with pages from the small newspaper the grocery store provides for free. I can’t stand the thought of my groceries – including the bags – touching the rust. (Winn Dixie cleans and paints their cart on a frequent schedule.)
One day I asked the Publix manager: “Why is your company putting our food and lives in danger?” He responded that they pressure cleans the carts every few months and replace about a third of the carts once a year. That’s not good enough. Target and Whole Foods, for example, take steps to ensure that they rarely offer rusty carts.
Publix believes that rusty grocery shopping carts are a way of life – your life, to be exact.
If they cleaned or recycled carts more often – or replaced the carts with the versions used by Whole Foods and Target – we’d be safer, but their bottom line would be reduced. Alternatively, if they pass the costs on to consumers, it could also hurt their bottom line.
It’s too bad that doing the right thing isn’t more in demand. I can’t tell you how many women – and women with children – use those rusty carts.
Let your local grocery store know that rusted carts are not acceptable.