Carbide shooting on the rise this New Year's due to firework ban

People looking to bring in the New Year with a bang in the Netherlands have turned to carbide shooting since the government banned the use of fireworks again this year."If fireworks are banned, people will look for something else," carbide can producer Rein der Bruggen said.

Carbide shooting is when someone mixes carbide and water in a milk can. The mix is then ignited to produce a deafening bang.

"We see for the second year in a row an increased demand for carbide," a spokesperson for the carbide deliverer OAF Holland told NU.nl. The company said that their stock had been completely emptied in the run-up to New Year's.

Previously, the tradition was mostly prevalent in smaller towns in the northern, eastern and southern regions of the Netherlands, but now city dwellers have started to catch on. "At first, I mostly had clients from rural areas but that has changed in the past two years. Now, I also have clients from, for example, Amersfoort, Utrecht and the Randstad.

Municipalities can decide for themselves if they want to ban the practice or not.

"I always explain to people how it works because if you don't know that, carbide can be quite dangerous," Ter Bruggen said.