Pincé, Sarthe, France

What was done

Pincé, a very small village in the Sarthe (north-western France), is credited as the first municipality to run a hen-distribution scheme for household waste reduction, in 2012 — predating Colmar's better-known programme by three years.

The commune offered each participating household two hens, along with a bag of feed, to consume kitchen and food scraps. A total of 31 families took part. The mayor at the time, Lydie Pasteau, described the idea as having started half as a joke before the commune realised it was genuinely effective, and called the scheme a "surprising" success.

Why this case matters

Pincé is significant less for its scale — 31 households is tiny — than for being the proof-of-concept that the model spread from. After Pincé, the approach was picked up by larger French intercommunalities (Colmar, the SMITOM du Santerre, Trivalis in the Vendée and others) and by Belgian towns. It demonstrates that the smallest rural commune can originate and run the scheme with minimal resources.

What a replicating municipality should know

• The model has no minimum size. A village can run it: Pincé did so with 31 households and almost no infrastructure beyond hens and feed.
• It can start as a low-stakes experiment. Pincé's own framing — half a joke that turned out to work — is a reminder that a small first round is cheap, low-risk, and a legitimate way to test local appetite before any larger commitment.
• Early movers become reference cases. Pincé's visibility helped the idea propagate; a small commune running an early scheme can have influence well beyond its own waste tonnage.

Honest reading

Outcome recorded as success on the commune's own account; no measured diverted-tonnage data is available for a scheme of this size and date, so the significance here is historical and demonstrative rather than quantitative.