Did you know that throughout the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, over 13 million meals will be served, that 16,000 beds are needed for athletes alone, and that over 15 million spectators are expected to come watch the Games in person? What!!?
Just a few weeks prior to the start of the Games, we were invited to Paris to see how this bustling city is preparing for this summer’s Olympic events, visit the Paris 2024 headquarters to hear from those involved in planning 'the greenest Olympic Games in modern history' from the start, and check out the Olympic Village where the world’s top athletes call home throughout the duration of the Games.
Live from Paris 2024
Here, at Paris 2024’s Committee Headquarters in Saint-Denis, is where years of planning, strategy, and fearless innovation have taken place to make this year’s Olympic Games happen. With numbers like this, the team behind Paris 2024 has learned to ‘do more with less, do better, and leave a useful legacy,’ prioritising sustainability in every detail, small and large.
The first Olympic Games fully aligned with the International Olympic Committee’s ambitious program of reforms, and guided by promises to deliver a spectacular Games that are more responsible, more sustainable and more inclusive, we had the opportunity to sit down with the woman who has been spearheading sustainability efforts since Paris won the bid to host the Games back in 2018 and Paris 2024's Director of Sustainability, Georgina Grenon.
"One huge ambition of Paris 2024 was to reduce [carbon] emissions by half compared to previous Games," Georgina tells us. This is no small feat by any means. "In order to do that," she continues, "we needed to put in place a system that could get climate action and sustainability at the heart of the [Paris 2024] operations."
Competition Venues
One result of this system, and one of the biggest differences between Paris 2024 and past modern Olympic Games, is the use of 95% existing or temporary structures for competition venues.
An often-forgotten-about aspect of Olympic Games’ impact is construction, which is not only one of the largest contributors to the Games’ overall carbon emissions, but also requires vast amounts of resources, and generates immense waste from building sites. By using 95% of temporary or existing venues for competitions–like the Stade de France for football and athletics or the Roland-Garros complex for tennis–just the carbon emissions alone total to 30% less than what past Olympic Games have generated, not to mention material savings, reduced labour costs, and more.
The Aquatics Centre
Along with Le Bourget Climbing Wall, the only competition venue built specifically for the Games is the new Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis, located only about two kilometres from the Olympic Village.
Using low-carbon and bio-based materials like French Douglas fir for the exterior and Finnish spruce for the beautiful interior, the Aquatics Centre’s concave design also reduces the need for heating and cooling by 30%!
It also provides a much-needed sports facility to the community and French national swimming after the Games, while simultaneously boosting the local economy and supporting small, green businesses now. For example, over 100 tonnes of recycled plastic bottles and caps have been transformed by local company Le Pave into thousands of spectator seats for both the Aquatics Centre and another nearby arena that will be used for gymnastics during the Games.
The Aquatics Centre also has one of France’s largest solar farms on its rooftop, stretching over 5000 sq. metres, and that is able to supply 20% of the clean electricity needed by the facility. During the Games, the Aquatics Centre will host artistic swimming, diving, and water polo events, and has the capacity to be transformed into a 2,500-seat facility to host community events afterwards.
Environment
Minimising the impact of the Games on existing ecosystems has always been another top priority for Paris 2024, with biodiversity preservation at the top of the list for sites where new or temporary venues needed to be constructed. With tireless work from the Paris 2024 Ecological Conservation Committee, measures have been implemented to protect soils against compaction, preserve trees and green spaces, limit light pollution, allow wildlife to move around freely, and make venues adaptive to climate risks.
Similarly, focus has been tailored to strengthening the Games’ resilience against climate risks like extreme heat or heavy rainfall through shade tents, temporary misting solutions, and shelters.
And what about the swimming in the Seine you may have heard about?
Hosting the triathlon, paratriathlon, and marathon swimming events, reclaiming the water quality of the Seine has been a major ecological challenge pursued by the French government for years, but has been accelerated by the Games.
However, the commissioning of the disinfection of two streams from upstream wastewater treatment plants, the gradual compliance of improper building connections and boat hookups, and the construction of the Austerlitz Storage Basin—which will store the equivalent of 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water—have been progressively improving the water quality, and are determined to ensure the safety of the venue for both the athletes, and those who wish to swim in the proposed public heritage swimming areas from 2025.
Public transport and accessibility
Keeping in line with its goal of using or improving existing infrastructure for the Games, Paris 2024 has ensured that every competition venue will be accessible via public transport, with three-quarters of venues within the Île-de-France region–which includes Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis–also located within 500m of a public transport stop, with bus, train, and tram frequencies increased for the Games in order to accommodate visitors.
For those who maybe live or are staying closer to venues, or even for those who just want to enjoy the beautiful summer sunshine, over 400 km of cycle lanes have been developed to connect all Île-de-France venues, and over 20,000 bicycle parking spaces have been created to ensure you can cycle to and park at venues smoothly.
Did you know that this will be the first Olympic Games in history with complete athlete gender parity? Inclusion and diversity are the keys to the Paris 2024 Social Charter, ensuring that people of all genders, abilities, sexual orientations, and backgrounds feel safe, supported, seen, and celebrated throughout the Paris 2024 ecosystem. This can hopefully leave a more inclusive, equitable, and diverse legacy for future sporting events too.
When it comes to making the Games accessible to people of all abilities, this includes considering spectators, delegates, athletes, and staff. Ensuring the accessibility of training and competition venues is vital, but so is ensuring accessible transportation options, providing employment opportunities for various social enterprises at the Games, and equipping all staff to know how to best accommodate persons with disabilities.
Combining technology and innovation with knowledge learned from past Games, Toyota has supplied Paris 2024 with 250 of these APM’s, fully electric vehicles that are ramp accessible, adjustable to fit mobility aids of all sizes, and multi-use to help athletes, staff, and supplies get around the 52 hectare Olympic Village, and between competition venues. Battery-powered mobility scooters and wheelchairs have also been supplied to assist athletes around the Village. Oh, and speaking of…
The Olympic Village
In the Paris 2024 Olympic Village, over 15,000 of the world’s top athletes will converge for 28 days for both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Not only are they to sleep, eat, and train here, but the goal of the Olympic Village is to make the athletes feel at home away from home throughout the Games. With seven on-site training facilities, a post-office, cafés, a state-of the art gym, and a canteen that will serve on average 40,000 meals per day, the Olympic Village had to be designed with both practicality and sustainability in mind.
Construction
The Olympians will be staying in the site's apartment complexes, which were built with sustainable materials like wood and ultra-low carbon and low-carbon concrete.
Low-Carbon Concrete creates approximately 150kg of CO2 per cubic meter and Ultra-Low Carbon Concrete generates less than 100kg of CO2 per cubic meter compared to the 250kg of CO2 per cubic meter generated by conventional concrete.
The buildings themselves use innovative construction technologies, and natural materials like wood for beams, posts, and floors for buildings under 28m in height, as well as low-carbon and ultra-low-carbon concrete. Carpeting–typically made from plastic–has been limited too to only essential zones like competition venues.
Powering the Village
To power a site as immense and multi-use as the Olympic Village, as well as the Games themselves, Paris 2024 has eliminated the usual diesel generators, and will be powered by renewable solar and wind energy via the national electric grid. Rather than relying on limited existing grid hookup points, Paris 2024 has installed hundreds more national grid hookup locations across venues to ensure that they can be powered solely via renewables. As backups to all housing, media, and competition venues, Paris 2024 plans to rely on biofuels, batteries, or hydrogen power in case of high demand.
Similarly, in partnership with EDF, the Olympic Village is home to the world’s first floating mobile solar power plant, Solaire-sur-Seine. With the ability to be assembled, moved, and disassembled within 24 hours, Solaire-sur-Seine has the capacity to meet the energy needs of 94 apartments within the Olympic Village, and will be fully reused once the Games have concluded.
Experimental innovations have also been trialled within the Village, setting a precedent for future events. Instead of energy-intensive cooling and heating systems, a geothermal network has been built to supply heating and cooling to the Village both during and after the Games. Advanced insulation techniques and solar films have also been used on buildings within the Village to ensure that the inside of buildings stay significantly cooler than outside on hot days. For outdoor spaces, Aerophiltres showcase a pioneering approach to air purification, filtering the air of 95% of harmful pollutants.
And what about those cardboard beds?
Did you know that over 16,000 beds are needed just for the athletes throughout the Games? Not to mention the need for mattresses and pillows that must also be customisable based on height, weight, preferred firmness, and more.
As you may have heard, each bed, produced by French company Airweave, is made from fully recyclable cardboard. But how can cardboard be strong enough to support athletes? Simple, the interior structure of cardboard, like honeycomb in a beehive, can withstand both enormous weight and lots of movement, while also being able to be fully recycled afterwards.
We had the chance to jump on the bed to put it to the test, but if you don't believe us, here's Olympic diver Tom Daley's take on them too.
Upon arrival at the Village, athletes also received a 5-minute mattress fitting session to ensure that their desired mattress firmness is fully customised to their preferences. Segmented in three to five mattress blocks, an athlete can request a firmer mattress up top, a softer one around their middle, and a soft one at their feet, ensuring a good night’s sleep for everyone. After the Games are over, most athletes choose to take the duvets home with them as unique memorabilia from the Games, and all mattresses and pillows will be distributed to various schools, charities, and the armed forces.
Food
Located in the hub of the Cité du Cinema, the Olympic Village canteen will be serving up to 40,000 meals every day, with over 13 million meals prepared across all Olympic venues throughout the Games. That’s the equivalent of the amount of food provided at ten World Cup tournaments!
In keeping with their mission of circularity, supporting local businesses, and doing better for the environment, Paris 2024 is doubling the vegetarian offerings of the Games across venues with help from fully vegetarian caterer Garden Gourmet, and will support the Concorde venue in offering a 100% vegetarian menu. These efforts alone will halve the total carbon emissions from food at the Games, and sourcing 80% of the total food supply from within France will further bolster this achievement.
Paris 2024 will also be the first sports event to implement the sorting of bio-waste and recyclable packaging across competition venues, enabling food waste to be turned into compost and all single-use packaging to be recycled. In addition, various alternatives to single-use plastics will be available, like allowing reusable bottles into competition venues to be filled at free water fountains, and by providing reusable and returnable cups, and the placement of over 700 beverage fountains across the Olympic Village, competition venues, and public concessions.
Circularity
Not only implemented within the Paris 2024 Food Vision, one of the goals from the start has been to achieve near-total circularity, leaving as minimal of a negative impact on the city and environment as possible. By first calculating its ‘material footprint’ and seeking out responsible procurement strategies, Paris 2024 was able to reduce the amount of furniture pieces needed from 800,000 to 600,000—a huge first for the Olympic Games, and 90% of the items have been assured by contract to be given a second life.
This includes all of the gym equipment from the Olympic Village; temporary structures needed for spectator concession stands or competition venues; uniforms, technical equipment, Olympic Village apartment furniture, symbolic objects, and more. You can read more about Paris 2024's full Olympic Circularity Strategy here.
With over 75% of Paris 2024’s suppliers being small to medium sized enterprises, various local businesses helped to create truly unique pieces for both the Games and Olympic Village, like tables made from badminton shuttlecocks or stools made from recycled paper notes from the Bank of France, all of which will all also be given a second life with partnering companies or donated after the Games to the charity Emmaüs which combats poverty and homelessness.
Nothing is more sought-after at the Olympics, however, than the medals of course! Just like the Tokyo 2020 Olympics used recycled electronics to create its medals, Paris 2024 is integrating Paris’s best known metal literally into these Olympic medals too—the Eiffel Tower! Placed at the heart of the medals is an original piece of iron from the Eiffel Tower, with certified recycled gold and silver, and an alloy of copper, tin, and zinc from the Paris Mint to form the bronze medals surrounding it.
Legacy
There are so many moving parts behind creating an Olympic Games that are truly memorable, exciting, and sustainable, but what happens after the Games are over? We’ve covered a bit about the second life secured for physical items in the Games, but what impact or legacy is Paris 2024 leaving on both the region and the French public as a whole?
Conceived first as an eco-neighbourhood, the Olympic Village will be transformed into a business and residential district, providing workplaces, affordable housing, supermarkets, green spaces, and even two schools for residents, with close access to the new Aquatics Centre. Similarly, other Paris-based competition venues like Le Bourget’s indoor sports facility and Porte de La Chapelle Arena will provide much-needed sports facilities to their local communities after the Games.
In Marseille, renovations made to the Roucas Blanc Nautical Stadium will offer ideal training conditions for athletes from France’s Marseille sailing hub, as well as state-of-the-art training facilities for all skill levels.
Paris 2024 also directly created over 181,000 jobs, and, in order to aid both an ecological transition and socio-economic development, has developed with partners various platforms and tools to allow future events to follow its lead. From Enterprises 2024 (aka ESS 2024)—which helps advise and inform companies wishing to bid on Games and future major sporting events contracts—to Coach Climat—a free tool to enable event organisers to assess and reduce the carbon footprint of their events, regardless of expertise or scale.
Our Final Thoughts on the 'Greenest Olympic Games' in Modern History
An spectacle this large in scale, that requires hundreds of thousands of volunteers, staff, media personnel, planners, engineers, chefs, organisers, and athletes to all work cohesively to put on an excellent event can never be 100% perfect and sustainable--nor is Paris 2024 pretending to be.
To us, progress, evolution, and lasting change come about when daring, ambitious individuals work together to make advances that will leave lasting impacts, and that hopefully set a precedent for future Games too.
Put simply, Paris 2024 hopes to leave behind a tangible legacy for local communities, as well as an intangible legacy of methods, systems, guides, and tools for organisers of future sporting events—highlighting that sportsmanship, camaraderie, and competition don’t have to compromise on accessibility, inclusivity, cultural celebration, or environmental impact.
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Be sure to check out our full YouTube video on our time going behind the scenes at Paris 2024 here if you haven't already, and follow along with us at @goinggreenmedia on Instagram for more green projects that are changing the world. Learn more about who we are and what we do on goinggreenmedia.com
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