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Swedish birds given jobs as street cleaners – and are paid in seeds
12th of February 2026
Wild crows in Sweden are being trained to pick up discarded cigarette butts in exchange for small food rewards.
Start-up Corvid Cleaning hopes that the scheme will allow these highly intelligent birds to shoulder some of the burden of street-cleaning in Sweden.
Cigarette ends make up approximately 62 per cent of Sweden's street litter, according to the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation. The crow-powered system involves a specially-built machine that only dispenses a treat - such as a peanut - when a crow deposits a cigarette butt into a designated slot.
The birds rapidly pick up the task and due to their social nature they are quick to share the knowledge within flocks.
Corvids are renowned for their cognitive skills and for their ability to use tools. They also instinctively avoid ingesting obviously hazardous items, which means their risk of harm from cigarettes is reduced.
A pilot scheme for the system is taking place in the Stockholm suburb of Södertälje. If successful, Corvid Cleaning estimates that the cost of cigarette butt collection could be reduced by at least 75 per cent and will offer a low-maintenance alternative to traditional mechanical or human-based methods.
Södertälje spends around €1.9 million a year on street cleaning, much of it tied to litter removal. Ethical concerns include the potential long-term health effects of handling toxic butts on crows and whether consistent rewards might create dependency on the machines.
However, local officials remain cautiously interested in light of the budget-saving potential of the scheme amid stretched cleaning funds.
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