As Julian Montague drove around Buffalo, New York, he noticed them everywhere.
Tipped over at intersections, crushed by snowplows in parking lots, waiting alone at bus stops. Shopping carts had wandered away from their stores.
Montague, an artist, began photographing the wayward carts and eventually developed a complex classification system that sorted his sightings into more than 30 different categories.
"A lot of people, the shorthand for shopping carts, they think of homeless people appropriating them and using them," said Montague. "And that is something that happens, but it's such a small percentage of the activity that takes place."
Montague’s book, "The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification," humorously and rigorously documented a social problem that has been plaguing retailers and local governments for decades. Lawmakers and residents say the abandoned carts are a blight on neighborhoods, can cause environmental damage and are a costly burden to remove.
