Bonaire has a very clever way of of making sure shopping carts are not littering the island. It's an ingenious system. At first it stumped us. We couldn't figure out how to get a shopping cart released. We had seen this system on Aruba. It's much harder to navigate on Aruba because they have their own currency of tiny, tin coins. Let me explain...The carts are tethered together by a chain with a push lock at the end.
When a quarter or token is put in the slot on the handle it pushes the chain key out of the cart. Thus freeing the cart for use.
Many times, when you return the cart, another shopper will approach you and give you a quarter for the cart. That way they do not need to retrieve it from the lock system. It makes for a quick transfer.
At first, the Dutch shoppers would offer us quarters. They were speaking Dutch, of course, so we had no idea why they wanted to give us money.
Now we have quarters in our car for use at the grocery store. I also keep a plastic token handy along with my shopping bags ( plastic shopping bags are not available on the island).
When returning the cart to the storage line, the key can be inserted in the handle, pushing (releasing) the quarter and locking the cart.
It's a perfect system.
Aldi's has the same system in Arizona. I was surprised the first time I saw it too.
ReplyDeleteSeen that before at a store in Denver. Maybe needs to go back to that so people will return their carts to the cart correl
ReplyDeleteWe have seen this all over in our travels. A big deterrent to return them
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