Abandoned shopping carts – pushed into hedges, dumped in rivers, or stranded on city streets – have become symbols of pollution and waste , and a new study shows just how bad for our planet they actually are.

The research was carried out in the UK, where these grocery carriers are known as trolleys, and around 520,000 of them are deserted annually . Recovering, repairing, or replacing derelict carts comes with a sizable environmental cost.

"Thousands of shopping trolleys are reported as abandoned in the UK every year," says materials engineer Neill Raath from the University of Warwick. "When you multiply the carbon impact of retrieving each one, it becomes both significant and concerning."

Raath and his colleague, University of Warwick materials engineer Darren Hughes, calculated

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