Improving crow value
What is more appetizing than a soggy cigarette butt on the sidewalk or on your shoe? In Sweden, a company called Corvid Cleaning is using crows to pick up this discarded waste. For every butt deposited, the birds earn food. They collect the cigarettes, then drop them off in a specially designed machine. Christian Günther-Hanssen, founder of Corvid Cleaning, says the birds are still wild but are participating in the cleanup “on a voluntary basis.” The scheme is currently undergoing a pilot project, so the company can evaluate the birds’ health. The Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation estimates that there are over a billion cigarettes in Sweden alone. This type of waste makes up 62% of all litter, as reported by The Guardian. To keep the streets free of debris, Sweden spends about $2.2 million on street-sweeping. Günther-Hanssen believes that relying on wild crows to pick up cigarettes in exchange for food could reduce street-cleaning costs by 75% or more. “It would be interesting to see if this could work in other environments as well. Why is it that we can teach crows to pick up cigarette butts, but we can’t teach people not to throw them on the ground,” said Tomas Thernström, a waste strategist at Södertälje municipality, where the drop-off machine is located. “That’s an interesting thought.”
Cigarette… Buts?
I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day;
I haven’t had time for tobacco since.
I know that every cigarette I smoke takes five minutes off my life, but it takes ten minutes
to smoke it… that’s a five-minute net gain!
Smoking cures overweight problems… eventually.
A young kid came up to me and asked, “May I please have a cigarette?”
I was astonished. Kids these days have such great manners.
February 3rd Birthdays
1984 – Natalie Taylor, 1982 – Bridget Regan, 1981 – Alisa Reyes, 1980 – Maitland Ward
1995 – Thomas Janson, 1960 – Lawrence Taylor, 1981 – Jose Antonio Vargas, 1956 – Nathan Lane