Your trusted source

Corvid Cleaning, a Swedish startup specializing in training crows to pick up litter in exchange for food, claims that its program could save communities a fortune in cleaning costs, Oddity Central reports.

According to the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, over a billion cigarette butts are left on Sweden’s streets every year which represents about 62 percent of all litter. Teaching humans not to throw cigarette butts on the street has so far proven impossible, but a Swedish startup claims it can teach crows to pick up after us and save local communities millions of krone in cleaning fees every year.

Corvid Cleaning teaches wild crows to do our dirty work through a step-by-step learning process, that involves rewarding the birds with food for every cigarette butt they collect.

“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,” company founder, Christian Günther-Hanssen, said. “They’re wild birds taking part on a voluntary basis.”

He believes that the initiative could save the municipality at least 75% of the costs involved with picking up cigarette butts, depending on how hard the crows work. If it proves successful, Corvid Cleaning hopes that it will provide a permanent cleaning solution that can be implemented in other parts of the country and eventually nationwide.