L.A. Launches Shopping Cart Retrieval Effort

LOS ANGELES -- An area of the San Fernando Valley here is serving as a test for a shopping cart retrieval program that could be adopted citywide if it proves effective over the next six months, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday. Under the program, residents who see an abandoned cart can call the office of Tony Cardenas, the city councilman who devised the plan; Cardenas' office emails the information to the Bureau of Sanitation, which sends someone to pick up the carts and contact the store owners, who then have 10 days to pick up their carts at a sanitation center. In the first few days after the program was launched, 60 to 70 carts per day have been collected, the Bureau of Sanitation reported. -- Elliot Zwiebach