Diest, Flemish Brabant, Belgium

What was done

Diest (a town in Flemish Brabant, Belgium) ran one of the earliest and largest municipal hen-distribution schemes for waste reduction, in the mid-2000s — well before the better-known French programmes. Around 2,000 families each collected three hens, with the adoptive families also receiving basic instruction in hen care.

This is one of the pioneer cases of the model in Europe, predating Colmar (2015) by roughly a decade.

Reported figures

• ~2,000 participating families, three hens each (~6,000 hens).
• A widely repeated report states the ~6,000 hens reduced the waste reaching the local landfill by around 100 tonnes in the first month after the programme began.

What a replicating authority should know

• The model was already being run at large scale in the mid-2000s. Diest shows this is not a new or untested idea — a town ran it at the 2,000-household level long before the recent wave of programmes.
• Pair distribution with basic care instruction. Even in this early scheme, adoptive families were given hen-care guidance — a consistent feature of programmes that take welfare seriously.
• Treat the "100 tonnes in the first month" claim with caution. This striking figure is widely cited but traces to secondary reporting, not an audited municipal study. It is best used to illustrate the model's potential, not as a verified result — and a first-month figure is not a sustained annual rate.

Honest reading

Outcome recorded as inconclusive: the programme clearly ran at significant scale, but the headline impact figure is unverified secondary reporting and no audited diversion data is available. The case is included for completeness as an early large-scale precedent rather than as a measured result.