🚬 Crows help remove cigarette butts from Sweden’s streets
In the Swedish city of Södertälje, wild crows voluntarily pick up cigarette butts from the streets in exchange for some food.
According to Keep Sweden Clean Foundation62% of all litter is cigarette butts and more than a billion of them are left on the country’s streets every year. Hopefully the crows can help reduce the cost of cleaning up the streets. Just to clean Södertälje’s streets, the city spent 20 million Swedish kronor (over 2,200,000 dollars).
“They are wild birds that participate on a voluntary basis,” the founder of Corvid cleaning startup Christian Günther-Hanssen reveals to The Guardian.
Every time the volunteer crows insert a cigarette butt into the machine designed by Corvid Cleaning, they get a snack. According to Günther-Hanssen, the city would save at least 75% of the costs of picking up these butts.
Before the plan is possibly rolled out, Södertälje conducts a pilot project to ensure that the bird’s health is not affected given the type of waste they handle.
According to research, New Caledonian crows (a member of the corvid family) have the reasoning ability of a seven-year-old child, making them the best bird for the project.
“They are easier to teach and there is also a greater chance that they learn from each other. At the same time, the risk of them accidentally eating rubbish is lower, says Günther-Hanssen.
– The estimate for the cost of picking up cigarette butts today is around 80 öre [Swedish change] or more per cigarette puff, some say two kroner. If the crows pick up cigarette butts, it might be 20 öre per cigarette butt. The savings for the municipality depend on how many cigarette butts the crows pick up.”