A campaign in Paris was recently initiated to ban the 'Love Locks' in the city that holds 700,000 padlocks scrawled with lovers' names.
The 'No Love Locks' campaign which includes a petition that currently has over 1,700 signatures, was launched in February by two Americans residing in Paris who were shocked at the extent of the trend across the city, the Guardian reported.
Lisa Anselmo, who co-founded the campaign, said that it was so out of control and people were climbing up lampposts to clip locks on, hanging over the bridge to put them on the other side of the rail, risking their lives to attach one.
Anselmo added that it was not simply an aesthetic concern as the weight of the locks presented a safety issue since the Pont des Arts was just a little footbridge and was now holding 93 metric tonnes from the locks. The city replaces it and two weeks later it fills up again.
Adam Driver, who had also affixed a love lock in Paris, said that the bridge in the city, near the Notre Dame cathedral, was almost covered with locks of all shapes, sizes and color and one could hardly see the bridge underneath them all.
Information on the official website for Paris states that if the tradition continued to grow in popularity and caused too much damage to the city's monuments, then solutions will be considered in a bid to address the problem.
