The Olympic Games are notoriously wasteful, creating thousands of tons of trash and using tens of thousands of gigawatts of mostly nonrenewable electricity, for example.
But with the upcoming Paris Games set to be the "greenest in history," one French construction startup is taking advantage of the opportunity to expand its business, as The New York Times reported.
Le Pavé in just a few years has increased its staff more than tenfold to 34 employees and is charting a course for the country's rapidly expanding clean technology industry. The organizing committee's goal to cut the Olympics' gas pollution by half led it to ask for the company to make 11,000 seats for a pair of new buildings, the aquatic center, and the gymnastics and badminton arena.
Co-founders Marius Hamelot and Jim Pasquet answered the call. They did it by upcycling shampoo bottles and "millions of multicolored bottle caps," per the Times.
"The two things common in construction are waste and trash, everywhere in the world," said Hamelot, who has long wanted to decarbonize construction, which is one of the most polluting industries. "How do you reinvent the materials used to build and that won't harm the environment?"
Pasquet said: "It was an incredible opportunity."
Financed by a state bank and with the help of 50 recycling centers, Le Pavé spent years testing prototypes before finalizing the deal in 2022, according to the Times.
It took 110 tons of recycled bottles and caps to produce the seats, and another 20 tons of recyclables to make what is an oft-overlooked staple of the Games: podiums. The 68 platforms were constructed with recycled plastic and plastic foam food containers.
The company has also sought to set social and education examples. It hired local employees and engaged students in the process. The latter group sourced yellow bottle caps to give the black and white seats some color and asked "tough questions about the environmental impact of plastics and how to reduce carbon emissions," the Times reported.
The measured, mindful approach is working. Le Pavé is expanding, having opened another factory that quadrupled its production capacity, per K-Mag, and it's working on financing two more facilities.
"We're making something beautiful out of old trash that is cluttering the planet," Pasquet said.
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