Watching the Today show with my morning coffee, I caught an interesting--and alarming--segment devoted to the (omni)presence of germs on shopping cart surfaces.  E coli, strep...you name it, the cart's got it.

Enter the antibacterial wipe, placing our fingertips at one step of near literal tissue remove from our antagonists.  All well and good but the onus is still on us to swipe and wipe; Bashas' Supermarkets in Phoenix ups the ante in our war against the germs by running all of their carts through a Pure Cart system, a sort of Hot Zone carwash that delivers a germ-free cart to its driver-in-waiting.

That's fantastic, proactive customer service, and in its way, a challenge to every customercentric company out there.  What can we do to clean your cart?  Before we get to the painting, that is...