Thirteen years ago, our CEO, Danny Gorog, took his son to a local playground and found the swing chain broken. That small moment of frustration became the idea behind Snap Send Solve. This week, he took a very different kind of frustration to air with ABC Radio Canberra's Georgia Stynes: what's actually happening to Canberra's missing shopping trolleys.
The answer, it turns out, is Lake Tuggeranong.
"Lake Tuggeranong is the lake that's had the most trolleys, according to our data."
Locally known as "Tuggers," the lake has picked up more stray trolleys than anywhere else in the ACT, part of a wider pattern Danny unpacked live on air.
- Trolleys alone account for 40% of all reports made in the ACT over the past year, around 2,000 in total out of just over 5,000 reports region-wide.
- Gungahlin, Belconnen, Braddon, Greenway and Canberra city rounded out the suburbs seeing the most activity, each logging well over 100 reports.
Not every trolley ends up on dry land. Of those reported in waterways specifically, most turned up in lakes, with the rest scattered across stormwater drains, ponds and creeks.
Georgia asked the obvious question: haven't the coin-lock systems some supermarkets use fixed this? Not according to the data. Danny noted that trolley reports have kept climbing over the past few years, locks and all.
Listen to the full segment below.
