I came across a fascinating project the other day, The Crowbar. Ruben van der Vleuten and Bob Spikman, two entrepreneurs in the Netherlands, are approaching the problem of inner city litter in a completely unique way – using crows as a clean-up crew. Their approach encourages the birds to recognize and pick up cigarette filters, take them to a special trash can/feeding station, and deposit them there in return for a small item of food. Similarly, in the Southwest Florida community that I call home, I heard about a similar program to enlist great-tailed grackles to clean beaches of small trash items in return for treats.
The success of these projects remains to be seen but the ‘out-of-the-box’ problem solving employed is assured. The idea of harnessing the (famous) intelligence of these birds to deal with a perennial inner-city issue is impressively innovative. And there’s a useful lesson to be learnt – always explore other options because there’s rarely just one possible solution.
What I find particularly exciting about The Crowbar, is how van der Vleuten and Spikman have used technology not to solve the problem directly, but to enable a solution. That’s how some of the most successful organisations use technology. Uber enables transportation from point A to point B, Airbnb enables unused living space, Netflix enables on-demand entertainment … and The Crowbar enables urban litter control.
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