The issue of littering is a problem plaguing every city and country in today’s world. However, in the midst of this, a Swedish startup is turning to nature’s most clever scavengers, crows, to tackle the issue, particularly of cigarette waste.
The pilot project, which started a few years ago, used wild crows as voluntary street cleaners. Essentially, the birds would collect discarded cigarette butts and deposit them into a custom-designed machine, in return for a small food reward.
The project has once again started to gain attention on social media platforms, with netizens expressing their intrigue and awe at this idea, which looks audacious, cost-effective, and environmentally minded.
What Is This Startup Doing?
In 2022, the Swedish startup Corvid Cleaning, founded by Christian Günther-Hanssen in Södertälje, a municipality outside Stockholm, developed an innovative idea to recruit wild crows to collect cigarette butts, thereby reducing the burden of street cleaning costs.
This process would involve training crows to place litter on specially designed “crow-vending” machines installed throughout the city.
The machine, upon identifying that the item placed in its receptacle is a cigarette butt or litter, would dispense a small food reward, typically seeds or peanuts. These machines act as positive reinforcement: by “trading” litter for food, which would incentivise crows to continue collecting butts from the streets.
According to reports, the birds used in this project are New Caledonian crows, known for their high intelligence and problem-solving ability.
As explained by Günther-Hanssen, the reason to choose crows for this project is that they are relatively easy to teach and have social learning capabilities, meaning they can learn behaviours from each other.
That social aspect boosts efficiency, and because of their precise pick-up ability, there is “a lower risk of them mistakenly eating any rubbish.”
In an interview with TT, Gunther-Hanssen said that, “The company chose to use crows as they are the most intelligent bird. They are easier to teach, and there is also a higher chance of them learning from each other. At the same time, there is a lower risk of them mistakenly eating any rubbish.”
Günther-Hanssen, speaking to the media at the start of the pilot project, believed that this could help the city save at least 75% of the money that goes into cleaning up cigarette butts.
The Guardian, in a 2022 report, quoted him explaining that “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 öre [Swedish change] or more per cigarette butt, some say two kronor. If the crows pick up cigarette butts, this would maybe be 20 öre per cigarette butt. The saving for the municipality depends on how many cigarette butts the crows pick up.”
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The project was started on a pilot basis in the city of Södertälje. The need for it was also raised after research from the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation estimated that more than 1 billion cigarette butts were discarded on Swedish streets every year, accounting for approximately 62% of all litter.
The cost to clean up this mess was significant, with Södertälje alone reportedly spending around 20 million Swedish kronor annually on street cleaning.
However, while the company’s founder is on LinkedIn, the company itself doesn’t have any official website or social media pages dedicated to it.
The Corvid Cleaning project has also not moved beyond the pilot stage. While the pilot showed promising results, a wider rollout for the entire city or beyond was dependent on several factors, including financing and the health and well-being of the birds involved.
So far, it remains at the pilot stage and has not progressed to a permanent, city-wide operation.
Another concern that has often been brought up regarding this project is the health of the birds. Cigarette butts contain toxic compounds, and critics worry about the long-term impact on the crows.
Corvid Cleaning has acknowledged this risk and claimed that they are monitoring the birds’ well-being. The founder has also emphasised that the birds participated voluntarily, saying, “They are wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis.”
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Moneycontrol, The Guardian, India Today
Find the blogger: @chirali_08
This post is tagged under: Startup, swedish Startup, swedish Startup crows, crows, innovative idea, pollution, cigarettes, cigarette pollution, environment, cleanliness, waste, plastic waste, Corvid Cleaning, Corvid Cleaning sweden
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When my wife and I visited the Tower of London, there were the typical trash cans with black bags containing food scraps at the bottom. Since the crows couldn’t reach the bottom with their beaks, they would gradually lift the bags with their beaks and hold them with their feet at the edge, repeating this process until the bottom of the bag rose and the food was within the reach of their beaks. Clever birds uh ?