Crows are being ‘hired’ in Sweden to clean up cigarette butts

To minimise the city’s cleaning expenditures, a Swedish company has sent crows to pick up cigarette butts and other sorts of garbage.

The birds are being taught to pick up trash from the streets of Södertälje and deposit it in a special vending machine that will give food to them in a step-by-step method.

The vending machine will be able to distinguish between litter and other commodities like stones and leaves.

The procedure is part of The Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation’s ‘Corvid Cleaning’ trial initiative. The project’s goal is to reduce the city’s street cleaning costs.

For street cleaning, the city presently spends 20 million Swedish krona (Rs 16.28 crore).

The company’s founder, Christian Günther-Hanssen, believed that using crows would save at least 75% of the costs.

He also stated that the wild birds were “willing participants” who were “easier to train” than other birds.

He told the Swedish news agency TT, “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.”

Further adding, “The saving for the municipality depends on how many cigarette butts the crows pick up.”

The foundation has so far used hooded crows, but magpies and jackdaws are planned to be included in the initiative, according to Günther-Hanssen.