Read the following text, which is an article about the use of horses instead of motor vehicles in France. 'A gentle calm': France's streets once again echo to sound of working horses Towns say they are not driven by nostalgia as they opt for horse-powered bin collections and school runs The clip-clop of hooves marked the start of the morning rubbish collection in the Brittany town of Hennebont, as Dispar, a Breton draft horse¹, pulled a small cart towards the waste bins on a central street. 'This job is so much nicer with an animal,' said Julien, 38, who usually worked emptying bins on to a motorised rubbish-truck in another town but was training in horse-drawn techniques. 'People see you differently, they say hello instead of beeping. This is the future, it saves on pollution, petrol and noise. And it makes people smile. Normally, I'd be constantly breathing in exhaust fumes behind my lorry, so this feels much healthier.' Faced with climate breakdown, the energy crisis, and modern stress levels, there is a growing movement in French towns to bring back the horse and cart as an alternative to fossil fuels and a way to slow down urban life. Florence, an estate agent in Hennebont, always steps out of her office to watch the horse-drawn bin cart pass. 'When I hear the sound of the hooves it's just total happiness to me,' she said. 'It brings a kind of gentle calm in these frantic times. It brings a bit of poetry into daily life, a reminder that things can be more simple. If I could live in a world without cars, I would.' Since the first trials to reintroduce draft horses for municipal tasks in the mid-1990s, the number of French towns and urban areas using them has multiplied by almost 20 and continues to rise. Up to 200 urban areas have used draft horses in recent years. The most frequent tasks are rubbish collection and horse-drawn carriages taking children to school. In the southern town of Vendargues, where the horse-drawn school carts are so popular that waiting lists have been 100 families-long, a study found they had improved the children's relationship to learning. Some children who could walk or cycle to school preferred travelling by horse-drawn cart, despite it taking longer, because they found it 'calming'. Municipal draft horses have also been used for the maintenance of green spaces, public transport to markets, local forestry work and collecting Christmas trees for recycling. Most towns using draft-horses are middle-sized, with many across northern France. In parallel, there has been an increase in the agricultural use of horses and donkeys, with hundreds currently used in vineyards and for market gardening. Carriage driving, which was once a man's domain, is increasingly attracting women. Local politicians like the symbolism of a horse to show they are acting for the environment. As one said, horses bring a 'feel-good factor'. But the use of draft horses remains driven by individual towns, and some local figures would like to see the state give more centralised backing and name horsepower as an official form of alternative energy. Towns argue they are not driven by nostalgia. At the start of the twentieth century, there was one horse for every five people in France, and draft horses often did perilous work in industry or down mines. 'It's absolutely not a return to the past,' said Vanina Deneux-Le Barh, a sociologist at the French Institute for Horses and Riding. 'It's a sustainable development approach, about respecting nature and welfare in new, innovative ways – for example with electric assistance for horses going up gradients, or with progress in new types of harnessing.' Hennebont, a town of 15000 people in the west of Brittany, is the latest to offer a new training scheme for municipal horses, carriage drivers and local authority workers. Its municipal Breton draft horses, Dispar and Circus, are brothers aged 8 and 9 who weigh about 900kg (1984 lb) each, and live outdoors in a vast paddock with limited work hours. Their plodding pace, at 6-8 km/h (3.7–5 mph), includes transporting children from an after-school club to the canteen, taking shoppers to market, activities at a local care home and collecting rubbish. But much of their time is spent resting. ¹ draft horse: a horse specifically bred to pull heavy loads