Swedish company uses crows to clean up cigarette butts
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Corvid Cleaning, a Swedish startup, was hired by a Swedish city to clean the streets from cigarette butts using crows.
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Corvids are being trained to become a new weapon in the fight against litter
The Swedish city of Södertälje is using crows to clean up its streets.
The city employed Swedish firm Corvid Cleaning, the company behind the method of using cost-cutting wild crows to clean up street litter in exchange for food.
"They are wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis," said Christian Günther-Hanssen, Corvid Cleaning's founder.
More than 1 billion cigarette butts are thrown on Sweden's streets each year, making up for 62% of all street litter. Södertälje spends close to $2.15 million on street cleaning every year. However, Corvid Cleaning's method would cut 75% of these costs.
Research has suggested that New Caledonian crows are as good at reasoning as a seven-year-old child, making them one of the smartest animals. They are easy to teach, have a higher chance to learn from each other, and there's a lower risk of them mistakenly eating the trash.
“It would be interesting to see if this could work in other environments as well," said Tomas Thernström, a waste strategist in the city's municipality.
"Also from the perspective that we can teach crows to pick up cigarette butts but we can’t teach people not to throw them on the ground. That’s an interesting thought," he added.
