Swedish start-up trained a group of crows to pick up trash that we're too lazy to throw in the bin
It is easier to train animals to collect our garbage than to educate us not to disperse it in the environment. Or at least, this is what it seems when learning the news of a Swedish cleaning and waste collection company, which has "trained" a group of crows to collect and properly dispose of cigarette butts in exchange for food.
It happens in Södertälje, a stone's throw from the capital Stockholm: a special machine has been installed here that supplies a little food to the birds for every cigarette deposited inside it.
More than a billion cigarette butts are abandoned on Swedish roads every year (62% of all waste): collecting and disposing of them costs the public administration about 20 million Swedish kronor (about 19 and a half million euros). This ingenious collection system would save a lot of money on street and urban area cleaning campaigns - up to 75% of total costs.
The creators of the Corvid Cleaning project say they are convinced that it is not a constraint for crows, which are not held in captivity but who participate on a "voluntary" basis, enticed by the prospect of being able to receive food without fatigue.
For this purpose, the New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) were trained, chosen for their intelligence and reasoning skills that make them particularly suitable for this task: the youngest are able to learn from specimens that have already been trained (saving human trainers time and effort) and there is a lower risk of them ingesting garbage by mistake.
But the madness of the project does not stop there, unfortunately: the creators want to take the crows also in other environments, in other Swedish cities, to repair the damage caused by human stupidity and the total lack of respect for nature. Initiative is the sad parable of the times we live in, where instead of finding a solution to our mistakes in our behavior, we ask for help from nature and animals (which have no faults in creating waste).
We hope at least those who pollute, dirty and destroy the environment in which they live can be pushed to a reflection that leads them to change their behavior.
Crows learn to pick fimpar
A new method has taught crows to pick up finches from streets and sidewalks. "That crows in the future contribute to sanitation in Stockholm, I see as probable," says Christian Günther-Hanssen, who with the startup company Corvid Cleaning has developed a method for teaching wild birds to pick up rubbish.
Posted by Mitt i Stockholm on Wednesday, January 26, 2022
Follow your Telegram | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | Youtube
Fonti: The Guardian / Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation
We also recommend:
- Cigarette butts pollute more than single-use plastics and don't cause seeds to sprout
- Pfas, alarm in municipal waste used as fertilizers: they also contain higher levels of manure
