How Paris is Redefining the Olympics with Sustainability and Innovation

Paris 2024 aims to rewrite the Games’ familiar and somewhat tired template – of gigantism, extravagance, and white-elephant creation.

Before the start of any Olympic Games, every host city faces criticism from the English-speaking world. Athens was never going to be ready on time. The air over Beijing would be deadly. Rio had the Zika virus and crime would strip champions of medals and reporters of their cellphones. Tokyo managed its Olympics in a cling-filmed Covid bubble. London 2012, however, had its major pre-Games issue as a shortage of security guards.

As consumers of the world’s English-language media, Indians are often presented with every Olympics being an absolute catastrophe before it begins, particularly those held in the non-Anglo world. Naturally, Paris 2024 is seen as a construction zone abandoned by its citizens, with its mayor jumping into the Seine to prove its water was suitable for triathletes and marathon swimmers. The Financial Times of London has declared Paris is hosting, “an ambitious but risky version of the Olympics.” The Athletes Parade down the Seine in a flotilla of boats is, according to a security expert quoted by FT, a “criminal folly.”

By hosting what is promised as the greenest, most sustainable, and most gender-equal Olympic Games, Paris 2024 wants to rewrite the Games’ familiar and somewhat tired template. Rather than the FT’s description of it as ‘risky,’ think of Paris 2024 as daring. Or as the French call it, l’audace.

It is not easy – already there has been pushback against the news that the rooms at the Athletes Village will not be air-conditioned but will rely on a geothermal cooling system, which reduces outside temperatures by six degrees Celsius. According to the Washington Post, the US, Britain, Australia, Germany, Canada, and Italy are planning to bring their own portable ACs. It’s worth noting who has thrown toys out of cots over air conditioning without even trying out geothermal cooling.

First World pressure has forced the Paris organizers to order 2,500 portable AC units that can be hired during the Games. How do those who talk loudest about environmental issues on global platforms find it so difficult to balance high performance and sustainability? Paris 2024 is approaching and overturning what was considered de rigueur in global sporting mega-events – to start with, infrastructure and organizational contracts to their organizer buddies.

In May 2018, Paris 2024 launched the ESS2024 Solidarity Platform, focusing on a unique distribution model for the €3 billion purchases and contracts arising from the organization for Paris 2024. Working with the Bangladesh-based Yunus Centre for Social Business and the French NGO Les Canaux, Games organizers sought to focus Games business and work opportunities around local entrepreneurs committed to sustainability and urban renewal. ESS2024 has meant, according to Marie Sallois, IOC director for sustainability, “opening Games-related contracts to those who need them most, as well as small and medium-sized and social businesses.”

A March 2024 IOC announcement said 460 such local businesses had been signed up to be part of the construction, catering, furniture, and laundry services for the Games. It included handing out €1.6 billion cleaning and laundry contracts to nine local businesses. Eleven thousand chairs across two venues have been created out of plastic waste; three young French students started a project for recycling plastic waste, which has turned into Le Pavé project, providing Olympic venue seating. Paris 2024 has built one permanent sports facility specifically for the Games: its Olympic Aquatic Centre, which will become a public swimming teaching, training, and event center after the Games.

Paris 2024’s approach has been advised by the philosophy behind the Yunus Centre. In September 2021, in an online conversation organized by the Abhinav Bindra Foundation, Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus wanted the world to look at sporting events like the Olympics from a lens other than revenue generation.

Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist, banker, philanthropist, and pioneer of microfinance/microcredit, said that while the power of sport was instantly recognized by “commercial institutions and businesses” who use it for their financial benefits, what is not used as effectively is the “social power” of sport. Sport, Yunus said, has “a 360-degree power” to reach every part of society. “We can benefit tremendously if we use that power for social goals without interrupting sport’s businesses benefits.” Events like Paris 2024, he said, could be used to meet social goals without diminishing economic benefits.

With its sustainability mission, Paris 2024 has tried to find a unique way to address what Yunus called the planet’s three interconnected crises – global warming, wealth inequality, and unemployment. Yunus’ eventual aim is called the Three Zeroes – zero net carbon emissions, zero wealth concentration, and zero unemployment. Addressing the global warming crisis, he said, “We always keep saying, okay, by 2050 we’ll do this, we’ll do that. I say we don’t have much time. Instead of talking about 2050, talk about today, tomorrow, make it urgent, make it now. By 2050 maybe we’re not here… We are the most endangered species right now on this planet.”

To now have portable air conditioners override geothermal cooling systems is a sign that Paris 2024 finds itself dissed for even having the right intentions. But it’s l’audace that could make Paris 2024, what Abhinav Bindra calls, “a benchmark for future Games.” The City of Light could show world sport the way, moving away from bigger, shinier, more extravagant events with gazillion-dollar fireworks.