Swedish Firm Deploys Crows To Collect Cigarette Butts, Birds Get Rewarded With Food For Every Deposit Made

Cigarette butts are one of the biggest contributors to plastic waste in the world. As per a 2019 study, about 4.5 trillion individual butts are polluting our global environment. In Sweden, a company is using crows to pick up this discarded waste.

Crows are being trained through a step-by-step process to pick up discarded cigarette butts from the streets and squares of a Swedish city as part of a cost-cutting drive, The Guardian reported.

Screengrab/Twitter

For every butt deposited, the birds earn food. They collect the cigarettes, then drop them off in a specially designed machine in the city of S?dert?lje.

The method is the brainchild of 'Corvid Cleaning' and it aims to lower the costs of street cleaning in the city.

Swedish enterprise Corvid Cleaning is testing a reward-based system where crows picking up cigarette butts and drop them into a trash can. Peanuts are then dispensed as a reward pic.twitter.com/3qjF2JrX0s

¡ª Reuters (@Reuters) February 2, 2022

Christian G¨¹nther-Hanssen, the founder of the company behind the method, said: ¡°They are wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis. They are easier to teach and there is also a higher chance of them learning from each other. At the same time, there¡¯s a lower risk of them mistakenly eating any rubbish."

"The estimation for the cost of picking up cigarette butts today is around 80 ?re [Swedish change] or more per cigarette butt, some say two kronor. If the crows pick up cigarette butts, this would maybe be 20 ?re per cigarette butt. The saving for the municipality depends on how many cigarette butts the crows pick up," he added.

Representational Image/AFP

New Caledonian crows, a species of crows that possess the intelligence of a seven-year-old human child, are being used for the job.

There is still concern about the birds¡¯ health handling this toxic litter. However, Corvid Cleaning is carrying out several tests before potentially rolling out the operation across the city, with the health of the birds being the key consideration given the type of waste involved.

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