“We share the vulture’s GPS coordinates with the municipalities,” says Javier Hernandez, the project director. “It’s their job to collect the rubbish and to try and change the habits of their residents.” The project aims to encourage citizens to be “vultures on the ground ”: to report fly-tipping, cut back on their own waste and recycle. Some residents are responding, posting photos of illicit dumps on the Twitter feed and Facebook page. The idea was hatched at the 2014 United Nations Climate Change Conference, hosted in Lima. “We were looking for ways to involve not just the authorities but also citizens to generate environmental awareness,” Hernandez says. Artist Cristina Planas had placed huge, sculpted vulture heads on top of 25 dead palm trees in a wetland reserve in the south of the city. Rich residents hated it as an ugly imposition but Planas invited citizens to “adopt a vulture” in support of conservation and recycling. “We are a little scared of the vulture’s appearance,” she said. “But in reality, he is out there sacrificing himself for us. He is out there recycling, in the last place we threw out our rubbish.”