Now Amsterdam tries garbage bikes

Amsterdam is trying a new, but not surprising solution for its growing street- and canal-side piles of garbage waiting to be collected. Since it's Amsterdam, it involves bikes, in this case the ubiquitous cargo bikes that often substitute for small trucks.

In one area of central Amsterdam, residents now use an app to notify the sanitation department when they have bags of garbage to dispose of, and a cargo bicycle is sent to collect the bags and pedal them off to a collection barge in the nearby Singel canal. A dispatcher collects the requests and routes the pickup much as a package service routes deliveries.

So far, local and city officials are pleased with the experiment, which will run through 2025, and say streets are already cleaner. In addition to the experiment, the city is also putting out more trashcans in other parts of the city and hiring more staff.