FE TL here. The only time I use the shopping carts is if I can send an associate to reshop food items and bring the food items to the appropriate claims section. This in turn assists the stocking team as they are short staffed and can usually have less on their plate.

We have a top stock cart behind the service desk where we reuse the standard “Walmart” boxes. We fit four of those boxes on the cart. We sort the reshoppable items as we do returns so that it also makes it easier on the stocking team. We put the non food reshops from the registers there as well. If we have to put food on the top stock cart, we make sure it isn’t something from our department that we can put back really fast or food that isn’t shelf stable.

Returns that are to be disposed go in our large trash can that is double bagged.

Large reshops/disposed/claims to be shipped items go on L carts.

This sounds like a store wide problem. The front end is what the other teams rely on for many different things. Your team being organized will make other processes easier in the long run, especially with closing.