Crows Are Being Used to Swoop in and Pick Up Cigarette Butts in Sweden

A Swedish startup is using crows to help clean up parts of a city by deploying the bird to pick up cigarette butts, The Guardian reported.

The startup called Corvid Cleaning in Södertälje, near Stockholm, is training the birds to pick up the discarded butts and bring them to a machine in return for a little food, according to The Guardian.

“They are wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis,” said Christian Günther-Hanssen, the founder of Corvid Cleaning, told The Guardian.

The company thinks that it will help clean about 75% of the discarded butts found around Södertälje, The Hill reported.

The Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation says that more than one billion cigarette butts are left on Sweden’s streets each year and represent 62% of all litter in the country.

Södertälje spends 20m Swedish kronor (just over $2 million) on street-cleaning each year, The Guardian said.

Cigarette butts can take up to 10 years to fully decompose, but the chemicals they release during decomposition, including arsenic, lead and nicotine, can linger in the environment for longer and cause pollution if they get into soil and water, The Hill said.

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