A city council plans to fight against “the plague” of shopping carts thrown into its rivers and streets, hitting supermarkets even harder in the pocket.

Members of Canterbury City Council (CCC) said the unsightly metal carts are “everywhere and ruining the view”, forcing authorities to remove hundreds in recent years.

To solve the problem, supermarkets are expected to be fined higher for collecting, storing and, in some cases, destroying carts.

Councilor Alister Brady proposed a motion to the CCC describing trolleys as “the scourge of our city”, while Sainsbury’s and Morrisons said they took the issue seriously.

He said: “This leads to fly tipping, more rubbish being placed, the area collapsing.

“Abandoned trolleys in the Stour are incredibly harmful to wildlife – we have a beaver refuge there and supermarkets seem to absolve themselves of responsibility.”

In Canterbury and the rest of the district, Canenco (the council’s waste management company) collects discarded trolleys and supermarkets pay £82.50 if they collect them within six weeks.

If they do not claim the shopping trolley within six weeks, CCC destroys it and charges £146.67 to the grocery store instead.

A Morrisons spokesperson said: “We take this matter very seriously.

“As soon as we become aware of any abandoned carts, we work together with Trolleywise (a company that collects lost carts) to ensure they are returned to our stores.”

Sainsbury’s expressed similar sentiments, with a spokesperson adding: “We have measures in place to prevent trolleys from leaving our property, including a coin/token operated locking system at our Canterbury store.

“We also work with a specialist contractor to collect the trolleys and ask anyone who sees an abandoned one to report it on the TrolleyWise website or in store so we can recover it as soon as possible.”

Asda and Aldi did not respond to requests for comment.

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