Ravens train to clean up cigarette butts on Swedish streets | FM96 London

Tired of cigarette butts littering its streets, a Swedish city gives the solution to the birds.

A start-up from the town of Södertälje, near Stockholm, has developed a machine that feeds crows for every cigarette butt they bring and place in the machine.

Corvid Cleaning company believes its device could help the city save money when it comes to cleaning up unsightly debris.

In fact, founder Christian Günther-Hanssen told The Guardian that he hopes the ravens will cut the city's budget for homeless removal by 75% .

The Keep Sweden Tidy foundation claims that the city of Södertälje spends around $2.7 million annually on street cleaning and that more than a billion cigarette butts are thrown onto the streets of Sweden every year.

Günther-Hanssen told Swedish online news site The Local that he only uses wild birds for his business and that all participating crows "participate on a voluntary basis ".

He said because ravens are so smart, they can be trained fairly quickly using a step-by-step method.

"They are easier to teach and there is also a greater chance that they will learn from each other. At the same time, they're less likely to accidentally eat trash, " he said.

Sweden isn't the first country to try out the program of crows as health workers.

In 2018, six ravens were trained to pick up cigarette butts at a theme park in France. Instead of hiring the ravens as permanent employees, it was part of a larger awareness campaign to get people to throw cigarette butts in the trash.

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However, theme park president Nicolas de Villiers told The New York Times that they had to be careful about how hard the ravens were working .

"They don't play the game if they work too hard," he said, explaining that birds are smart and need mental stimulation and puzzle solving to thrive.

A 2017 Dutch campaign called Crowbar also attempted to train crows to collect cigarette butts for a meal reward , but officials decided to end the project in 2018 when they concluded they "didn't have a clear idea about it." could have what they would be ". the impact ." will be in the ravens and the environment .

Cigarette butts are one of the most common forms of man-made pollution worldwide.

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According to supporters of the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project , nearly two-thirds of the 5.6 billion cigarettes manufactured each year are irresponsibly thrown away. Many of these cigarette butts end up in water bodies around the world.

The long-term success of Corvid Cleaning's ambitious pilot project will depend on funding , Tomas Thernström, waste strategist for the municipality of Södertälje, told The Guardian.

"It would be interesting to see if it could work in other environments. Also from the perspective that we can teach crows to pick up butts, but we can't teach humans not to drop them on the ground . That's an interesting idea," he said.

– with file by Josh K. Elliott

© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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