To help the environment, French towns are using horse-drawn carts to collect garbage and recyclables.
Garbage trucks are some of the heaviest polluters to drive through city streets. In the US, green trends like using fuel from waste to power the trucks are making headlines—but French towns are taking a different tactic: trading in the trucks altogether for horse-drawn carts.
The swap makes trash-collection fuel-free (except for a few carrots), exhaust-free, and silent, but for an occasional neigh. In the medieval town of Peyrestortes, the decision was made for practical reasons as much as environmental: “You can’t turn a waste collection vehicle around here. We used to block streets to traffic and keep waste in open skips,” the town’s mayor, Jean Baptiste, told The Guardian.
More than 60 towns in France are using horses to collect recyclables and waste, and the novelty of the trash-collectors is helping the general public gain awareness of what materials they should be recycling, helping the towns save considerable money. “People are composting more,” said Saint Prix’s mayor, Jean-Pierre Enjalbert. “Incineration used to cost us €107 a tonne, ridiculous for burning wet matter, now we only pay €37 to collect and compost the waste.”
As France trades in horsepower for horses, it’s not the only country getting help with trash-collection from four-legged friends: A town in Sicily has been carting glass and cardboard recycling on donkeyback for the past three years, and its mayor estimates that the conversion from a fleet of trucks has saved 34% of their costs.
No telling whether horse-drawn garbage collection will gain traction in the U.S., but as a clean, green, quiet, and cheap trash-collecting solution, it seems to be win-win all the way.