Each year, trillions of cigarette butts are thrown on the streets of cities worldwide, but what if a highly intelligent urban creature could be trained to pick them up, and even be automatically given a treat for their troubles?

Crows are adept learners, able to use tools and think outside the box. Notably, they have already been trained to use specialized ‘vending machines’ in which they receive food for depositing a coin. By extension, butts could be the new coin of the urban crow realm.

Cities have tried all kinds of things to get smokers to stop discarding butts on the ground, including ‘ballot bins’ letting them vote for favorite sports teams as well as light-up and musical garbage cans. Alas, humans are tricky to train, and not always very responsible.

But crows are another matter — not only can they learn to perform tasks, but they can also pass their knowledge onto others of their species. Through this kind of viral education, Crowded Cities, an Amsterdam-based startup, thinks they could be the future of litter collection.

Inspired by the work of Joshua Klein, who had created the first crow vending machine, they began to explore the idea of using that same principle but with a different behavioral target. In the prototype, birds learned they could pick up a coin, put it in the device and get a peanut.

Crowded Cities is working in the same way with Crowbar, a gadget that features a ‘butt drop’ funnel, camera to verify that the deposited item is indeed litter, and treats given out on success.

Before they fully execute, however, they are doing more research to ensure that crows won’t be harmed in the process of collecting and dropping off butts. Some might also question the ethics of enlisting animals to clean up our messes (though others might call it a kind of symbiosis).

“It may turn out that crows can handle cigarette butts with no harm at all, in which case both crows and humans could benefit,” says one of the designers. “That’s the kind of solution I’m looking for.”

“Crows aren’t going away anytime soon, and it’d be nice to find a way for us to work cooperatively.” In the end, the project is also about raising awareness — perhaps simply knowing they could be called ‘dumber than a crow’ will encourage some smokers to be more civic-minded.

It started on a cold and snowy night when a wandering Japanese photographer became fascinated by the way the white flakes were piling up on an ordinary vending machine on the side of a road.

Eiji Ohashi began to document these machines, set against the rural backdrops and natural landscapes of Japan, a country with the highest ratio of vending machines to humans in the world (1 to 23).

For Ohashi and others, these devices are symbols of warmth and light in the long dark winters of Hokkaido, Japan’s cold north island. They offer hot drinks to offset the nighttime chill.

Japan’s famously low crime rate likely contributes to this vending machine culture as well, helping them to survive free of destruction or vandalism even in remote areas.

Indeed, they stand out as bright and modern in many contexts. Ohashi frames his curious subjects expertly against ancient architecture, vernacular structures, scenic mountains and vast bodies of still water.

Combining architecture, advertising and technology, this car dealership lets users punch in numbers to bring their vehicle of choice down a 15-story showroom looming above in full view. The tall lit-up facade of Autobahn Motors acts as a billboard and show space, letting fans scope out a Lamborghini from a distance then take it out for a test drive on the streets below.

The design responds in part to the lack of surface real estate in this space-crunched island city-state of Singapore, but it also serves as great marketing for the business. While not the first such automobile-vending tower in the world, it is the largest, and it works quickly: a user-selected vehicle can be brought down in just two minutes from the floors far above. Given land scarcity in cities, this unusual-looking typology makes a lot of sense, and could start to spring up in other places as well.

Meanwhile, for those in the United States: Carvana has smaller versions located in Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee. These are less a response to density issues and more driven by marketing and novelty.

And while the towers aren’t quite as tall the effect is still pretty neat – modular platforms provide vehicles on demand from an array of sports cars, hatchbacks, minivans and trucks.

As a bonus for fans of quirky interactivity: their system operates even more like a vending machine – users are given a giant coin to insert, which lets them bring down the vehicle of their choice from the display racks above.

Forget crackers and candy bars – you could be buying live lobsters, bike parts, whole heads of lettuce and even freshly baked baguettes with the push of a button from vending machines across the world. In fact, if you’re willing to blow into a breathalyzer and show your ID to a camera, you can even get a bottle of wine. These 18 vending machines take instant gratification to surprising extremes.

Anger Release: Break a Plate

Few things are more satisfying when you’re feeling livid than smashing a fragile object to smithereens. This vending machine caters to anyone who needs to release some anger , offering your choice of statues, vases, plates and glasses in highly breakable materials – though you won’t get to break it yourself. The satisfaction comes from watching the item fall into the bottom of the machine.

Live Crabs & Lobster

Vending machines aren’t exactly the most humane places for live animals to live, but that doesn’t stop people from offering both lobsters and crabs that you can either take home and kill yourself or have cooked at a restaurant. ‘Lobster Zone’ is actually an arcade game where you have to manipulate a mechanical claw to pluck a live lobster from the bottom of the tank. The slogan is ‘You catch ’em, we cook ’em!’ In China, vending machines offer Shanghai Hairy Crabs in a range of sizes for $1.50 to $7.50

Bikes & Bike Parts

The Bike Dispenser will spit out a dorky looking bicycle in exchange for your cash. While it’s just a concept, the idea is that you can either bring the bike back to the original vending machine location when you’re done, or ride it one-way to another machine. The bikes are fitted with RFID chips to keep track of them.  In New York, cyclists can find another bike-related vending machine that’s actually pretty handy: Bikestock offers bike parts, tools and locks as well as food and a quick tire fill-up.

Blue Jeans & Socks

Let’s say you’ve landed at the airport in a strange city after a red-eye flight only to find that the airline lost your luggage. You might be happy to see vending machines filled with blue jeans and socks. The brand ‘Closed Jeans’ has installed vending machines in train stations across Europe. Sock vending machines offer everything from colorful, stylish options to the most basic white athletic socks. The latter can sometimes be found in bowling alleys.

Hot Pizza, Mashed Potatoes & Chicken

If you’ve ever stared at the sad, cold offerings in a vending machine, wishing you could have some hot pizza instead, you might be in luck (if you can actually find one of these.) Pizza vending machines have been common in Asia for a while, and are now popping up in the U.S. thanks to Wonder Pizza USA, which offers steaming nine-inch whole pizzas in two minutes. If you prefer to mainline your refined carbs, hoover up some instant mashed potatoes and gravy at your local 7-Eleven courtesy of Maggi’s gross mashed potato machines. Other hot foods that can be procured disturbingly quickly with the push of a button include french fries, hot dogs, fried chicken and even squid.

Eggs & Fresh Lettuce

Lettuce doesn’t seem like an ideal item for a vending machine, considering its tendency to wilt pretty quickly. But this particular machine takes care of that problem by actually growing the lettuce on sponges under fluorescent lighting. Chef’s Farm, found in Japan, can produce 60 heads of lettuce per day. In rural Japan, where convenience stores are hard to come by, it’s not uncommon to find vending machines offering cartons of eggs.

Fresh Bread in Paris

Need a freshly-baked baguette at three in the morning? If you’re in Paris, you’re in luck (for a number of reasons). A baker decided to take advantage of the August holiday season, when most bakeries close up shop, by offering a 24-hour baguette vending machine filled with partially cooked loaves that are finished off just when you need them. The baker, who lives above his shop, came up with the idea after being repeatedly disturbed by potential customers knocking on his door after hours.

Gold Bars

Isn’t it annoying when you need some gold bars fast, but all the banks are closed? Gold to Go has got you covered with blast-proof, camera-guarded vending machines that will dispense small wafers of gold in exchange for your cash. The prices are updated automatically every two minutes to keep up with constantly fluctuating gold prices. The machines can be found in airports and shopping malls in Abu Dhabi, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain and a few U.S. locations.

Beer & Wine with a Side of CCTV

Show your ID to a real live person watching you via CCTV from a call center, blow into a breathalyzer to prove you’re not already drunk, and you can get a bottle of wine from a vending machine in Pennsylvania. The kiosks, introduced in response to the state’s archaic liquor laws, can be found in grocery stores. In Japan, some vending machines will pour you a pint of draught beer, while others offer a range of cans. For a promotion, Amstel offered free beer to any customer who could stand completely still in front of a vending machine for three minutes.

iPods & Other Gadgets

Best Buy’s airport kiosks are an increasingly common sight, offering last-minute, travel-oriented gadgets like digital cameras, phone batteries, headphones and pre-paid international cell phones. Better hope you press the right button, because if you need to return something, you’ll have to call an 800 number and wait for a prepaid label to come in the mail. Vending machines offering virtually every iteration of the iPod have also been spotted, and it’s almost guaranteed that they aren’t endorsed by Apple. 

Things have come a long way since the world’s first vending machine – a 2000-year-old device that dispensed holy water when a coin was slipped into a slot. Some now-vintage models dispense art or books – other new machines can cook food, recognize your face, respond to touch, and allow you to trade in your old gadgets and gizmos for new devices or even cold hard cash.

Art-O-Mat: Art in Cigarette Pack-Sized Packages

The Art-o-Mat is a pioneer in the realm of vending-machine reuse – a series of retired cigarette dispensers have been converted to vend art. With over 90 recycled machines around the United States, they have sold work from 100s of global artists.

The key to submitting your own micro-masterpiece? Making whatever you do – be it sculpture, craft, photography or painting – fit into a cig-sized box. People not near a machine can also order a carton of ten works to be shipped anywhere in the world.

Biblio-Mat: Skip the Sidewalk Discount Shelf

Switching gears, but not styles or machines: here is a lovely vintage machine that vends printed-word art (best known as books). From its creator, Craig Small: “The Biblio-Mat is a random book dispenser built … for The Monkey’s Paw, an idiosyncratic antiquarian bookshop in Toronto.”

As to its operation: “When a customer puts coins into it, the Biblio-Mat dramatically whirrs and vibrates as the machine is set in motion. The ring of an old telephone bell enhances the thrill when the customer’s mystery book is delivered with a satisfying clunk into the receptacle below.”

Swap-O-Matic: Exchange Instead of Buying or Selling

Some vending machines are not about the money at all, like the Swap-O-Matic – a set of one-stop non-shops for trading what you have for something else you want. Added items are turned into credits, which, in turn, can be converted into other objects – reduce, reuse, recycle, swap!

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