A startup company in Sweden has come up with an innovative new way of removing discarded cigarette butts from the streets of the city of Stockholm. The company has sought the help of wild birds to pick up cigarette butts in exchange for food.
Corvid Cleaning, a startup company located in Södertälje, near Stockholm, has invented a device that gives crows a little bit of food every time they deposit discarded cigarette butts. The machine automatically dispenses the food once the trash is placed inside it.
The founder of the company, Christian Günther-Hanssen, said the wild birds are taking part in the clean-up on a "voluntary basis." The birds, New Caledonian crows, are some of the smartest birds in the world. Researchers have speculated that the birds may be capable of reasoning equivalent to that of a seven-year-old human.
Günther-Hanssen said the crows are relatively easy to teach, and their intelligence allows them to also learn from each other. When one crow sees another getting a treat for depositing used cigarettes, it is more likely also to follow. The bird's intelligence also means that they are less likely to eat any rubbish they pick up mistakenly.
The Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, a non-profit environmental organization, estimates that more than 1 billion used cigarettes are thrown around Sweden's streets each year. The organization added that discarded cigarette butts account for about 62% of the litter on the streets of the country. The city of Södertälje is estimated to spend close to $2 million per year to remove the litter of its streets.
Günther-Hanssen said that his company's unique cleaning process could save the city around 75% in terms of what it spends to pick up cigarette butts around the city. The company has conducted a successful pilot program in Södertälje. It is also closing monitoring the health of the birds given their contact with used cigarettes, which may contain harmful chemical residues.
Günther-Hanssen estimates that the city likely spends between .80 to 2 kronor to pick up each cigarette butt. Using the crows, Corvid Cleaning only spends an estimated .20 kronor to do the same job.
Tomas Thernström, Södertälje's head of waste strategies, said the program is promising and it will be interesting to see if it can be applied to other types of waste as well. He added that it is strange that humans can teach crows to pick up cigarette butts, but it is another story when it comes to teaching other humans not to do the same. Thernström said the potential of the program would greatly depend on financing, either from the government or the private sector.
