A cleaning company in Sweden is teaching wild crows to clean up cigarette butts from the streets of Södertälje.
The birds are being trained to collect cigarette butts and deposit them into a drop-off vending machine in exchange for food.
The machine scans to confirm that the placed item is a cigarette butt and not other rubbish.
If the project works, it will allow municipalities in Sweden to reduce the cost of picking up cigarette butts by 75%.
“We can teach crows to pick up cigarette butts, but we can’t teach people not to throw them on the ground. That’s an interesting thought,” said Tomas Thernström, a waste strategist at Södertälje municipality.
