Try googling “Pigeon Pollution” and you’ll get 150 articles about backpack carrying pigeons circling the London skies. This isn’t your Eastpack from high school, these are mini pollution tracking pouches used to gather data. Through their website or mobile app you can find a comprehensive minute to minute report of your towns air quality and even advice for which activities to avoid on days with high pollution.
These birds with bags are teaching us that IoT has zero limits; the weatherman has been replaced by a bird named Julius. We simply took from ancient technology (see courier pigeon) and brought it up to 21st century speed, giving us a data collection platform that uses zero carbon emissions and is entirely effective because who else knows London better than their pigeons? And with this data we can get the dirty truth about the air we’re breathing and hopefully be enough for us to change our polluting ways.
Pigeons, Not just Rats with Wings.
One of the goals of Plume Labs founder Romain Lacombe is to provide citizens with knowledge about their surroundings which may be effecting their well-being, in turn arming them with the tools necessary to call out big business pollution as well as create an open dialog with their government.
While Tom Lehrer may consider his Sunday incomplete without poisoning pigeons in the park, the tides have turned as these guys may just save the planet.