A video of canal cleaning in Amsterdam has stunned the internet. Shared by Cosas de la Vida on Twitter, the clip shows authorities cleaning the waterways by using a giant claw-like machine to pull out bikes and junk from within the canal.
The 16-second video was shared on October 8 and has gathered over 8 million views on Twitter. The caption of the video when translated from Spanish to English reads, "Cleaning the canals of Amsterdam."
Watch the video here:
The internet was stunned by the video and it is getting widely circulated. A user wrote, "We did a brilliant boat tour a few years back and our guide said the bottom third of the canal was pretty much solid bicycle, looks like she was right!" Another user commented, "On my first visit there I was impressed by all the bicycles I saw on land. I had idea there so many under water as well."
The third user wrote, "There are more than 160 canals in Amsterdam and most of them were built in the 17th century. There are more than 800k bicycles in Amsterdam. Every year more than 10k bicycles are fished out from the canals."
According to The Guardian, every year, thousands of bikes are tossed into rivers, ponds, lakes and canals. No one is quite certain why or how so many bicycles wind up in the water. "The situation in Amsterdam is perhaps best explained by simple maths. There are an estimated 2m bicycles in the city and 30 miles of canals, and logic dictates that there will be some spillover of one into the other. When an Amsterdammer needs to get rid of an old bicycle, a waterway will often provide the most convenient dumpster. The Dutch newspaper Trouw once characterised Amsterdam's canals as “those traditional garbage cans where we take our visitors on boat trips”, reported the publication.
