Corvid Cleaning is founded by Christian Gunther-Hanssen and it's a startup from Sodertalje, a small city near Stockholm in Sweden. The wild birds carry out the task and receive some food for every butt they deposit in a machine designed by the startup, according to a piece in „The Guardian”.

According to the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, 1 bn cigarette butts are left on the streets every year, 62% of all the litter. And the city of Sodertalje spends more than 19 million euros on street cleaning.

According to the founder of Corvid Cleaning, the method could save at least 75% of the costs involved in picking up cigarette butts. They are using New Caledonian crowd. They have the reasoning of a seven-year old human kid, according to science.

“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”, said Gunther-Hanssen.

“It would be interesting to see if this could work in other environments as well. Also from the perspective that 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 Thernstrom, a waste strategist from the Sodertalje municipality.