Crows to collect cigarette butts

An experiment in a Swedish town. With excellent results. The crows are intelligent, robust, and amenable to training.

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crows to collect cigarette butts

A bird with a highly developed intelligence, similar to that of a child between 7 and 10 years old. A solid but agile body. A total willingness to cooperate. These are the characteristics of the Crow of New Caledonia who pushed the start up Corvid Cleaning, In agreement with the municipal administration of a Swedish town, to use this extraordinary animal for a special environmental mission, much like the fight against waste. Collecting and disposing of the cigarette butts.

CROWS COLLECTING CIGARETTE BUTTS

We are Sodertalje, a town about 30 kilometers from Stockholm, very important from an economic point of view: several industrial groups are based here, including the famous AstraZeneca Research and Development Center. In Södertälje they have a problem that we share throughout Italy: the quantity of cigarette butts that end up on the streets and even in public spaces such as gardens. With a double waste. The environmental damage (the biblical times for its disposal) and the economic damage (the enormous costs for its removal). In this Swedish town alone, the collection and disposal of cigarette butts costs 20 million crowns per year, equal to 2 million euros. And so here is the attempt to appeal to the crows through the company Corvid Cleaning.

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CROWS CLEANING

The model developed by the technicians of Corvid Cleaning It's very simple. Crows are trained to collect cigarette butts, and are "rewarded" with additional food. Thus, thanks to their intelligence, they understand that they are doing useful and profitable work. Christian Günther-Hanssen, founder of Corvid Cleaning: «The crows of New Caledonia are wild birds, easy to train and willing to cooperate. Furthermore, there is no risk of them eating other types of garbage." This is a delicate step in the crows' activity: they must not only collect the cigarette butts, but then place them in the containers designated for this type of waste, so that they are collected and finally disposed of correctly, through industrial recycling.

TO KNOW MORE: The waste that causes the most damage? Cigarette butts. But plastic bottles and Styrofoam cups never decompose (photo)

CIGARETTE BUTTS IN SWEDEN

The environmental disaster caused by cigarette butts, unfortunately, is shared by every country in the world. And it's simply the result of bad habits and a lack of civic sense. In Italy, only a few heroic people are addressing it. volunteers, who, for example, spend hours collecting cigarette butts on the beaches. According to the calculations of the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, even in the very civilized Sweden the phenomenon of cigarette butts in the streets is very worrying: every year, over 1 billion are thrown away throughout the country. And meanwhile the experiment of Corvid Cleaning It's starting to show results and looks promising for the future: the municipality of Södertälje has already seen its cigarette butt collection costs reduced by 75 percent.

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