SIRMOTOM, Montereau area, Seine-et-Marne, France

What was done

The SIRMOTOM (an inter-municipal waste authority in the Montereau area, Seine-et-Marne, France) ran "2 poules et un poulailler pour réduire nos déchets," a structured test-household pilot from October 2013 to mid-2014.

Selected from its member communes via a leaflet campaign, 40 test households each received two laying hens and a coop. The design was deliberately rigorous: the SIRMOTOM hired a specialist consultancy to train participants and to collect and analyse data over the six-month operation, with monthly reports and a follow-up visit to households having difficulties. The stated objective was explicitly to calculate the potential waste reduction across the territory and assess whether the scheme could be generalised.

Coop delivery and on-site assembly were handled by AIP Réfon, a local work-integration association — giving the operation a social-inclusion dimension.

What a replicating authority should know

• Designing the pilot as a study pays off. SIRMOTOM's goal was not just to place hens but to produce data — monthly tracking by a consultancy over six months — explicitly to decide whether to scale up. This is the right way to treat a first round.
• Outsource the analysis if you lack capacity. A small authority hired a specialist consultancy to run training and data analysis rather than improvising it in-house.
• Partner with a work-integration association for logistics. Coop delivery and assembly went through AIP Réfon, adding a social-inclusion benefit and handling a task households often struggle with.
• Build in a difficulty-triage step. SIRMOTOM scheduled a mid-operation follow-up visit specifically to the households reporting problems — a simple way to cut drop-out.

Honest reading

Outcome recorded as inconclusive here only in the sense that the per-household diverted tonnage from this specific pilot is not available in the consulted source; the pilot itself appears to have run as designed. The value of this case for replication is its method — a properly instrumented, analyst-supported pilot built to inform a scale-up decision — rather than a headline number.