By Tim Binnall
A Swedish company has come up with a rather clever way of curbing litter by training crows to collect discarded cigarette butts. The novel concept is reportedly the brainchild of Christian Günther-Hanssen, who formed the business Corvid Cleaning to put the plan into action. Currently being tested out on a small scale, the idea relies on the birds being rewarded with a treat when they pick up cigarette butts and deposit them in a small machine which dispenses the well-earned snack. Should the trial prove successful, Günther-Hanssen hopes to expand the operation throughout the city of Södertälje, which spends around $2 million a year to keep their streets clean.
By the entrepreneur's estimation, a murder of well-trained crows could slash the cost of such operations by a staggering 75% as, according to environmental groups, cigarette butts constitute a particularly pernicious form of littering in Sweden with a whopping one billion of the small pieces of trash being thoughtlessly tossed on the ground each year. Noting that the trash-collecting birds are "wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis," Günther-Hanssen stresses that the health of the animals is his foremost concern as the project develops.
Additionally, he indicated that the specific species of crow being used in the endeavor, known as New Caldonian, are widely regarded for their intelligence and reasoning skills, which studies say are on par with a seven year old child. "They are easier to teach and there is also a higher chance of them learning from each other," he explained, "at the same time, there's a lower risk of them mistakenly eating any rubbish." To that end, one waste management expert expressed interest in seeing how the project unfolds while also lamenting that "we can teach crows to pick up cigarette butts but we can't teach people not to throw them on the ground."