Olympics and Paralympics without single use plastics?

“For the Olympic and Paralympic Games, recycled plastic bottles are being replaced by a more eco-friendly mode of consumption, as recycling is not a sustainable solution to plastic pollution,” states the city of Paris on the Olympics events.

For the duration of the Games and festivities hosted by the City of Paris, authorities are committed to ending the use of single-use plastics. Whether it’s drinking, having an ice cream, or a takeaway meal, all containers and cups should be reusable. On competition sites, spectator areas, and the athletes’ village, Paris 2024 and Coca-Cola, the Games’ global drinks partner, have installed several hundred soda fountains to be used with refillable cups from the French company Re-Uz.

According to the newspaper Le Monde, recycled plastic bottles will be used “when operational conditions prevent the installation of fountains.” However, this could still amount to 6.4 million drinks being sold in rPET bottles.

Recycled HDPE

It is certain that at least soda bottle caps will make their appearence, by being recycled together with HDPE bottles into stadium seats for the Olympic Games. The French company Le Pavé, using a patented thermal compression moulding technology, and its partners have moulded, cut, and shaped about 11,000 seats from recycled HDPE bottles and caps for use in two Olympic arenas – the Arena at Porte de la Chapelle in Paris and the Olympic Aquatic Centre in Seine-Saint-Denis. Those seats alone consumed about 100 metric tonnes of waste HDPE.

Since recycled HDPE is also used in the victory podiums, at least bottle caps will have a significant presence at this year’s Olympics!