Circular economy and mega sport events – the case of the Olympics in Paris 2024

By Anna Gerke, Associate Professor at Audencia, Member of the Scientific Committee, Think tank Sport and Citizenship

With the planet facing ever more urgent environmental challenges including fast-pacing consumption of natural resources, the circular economy and its principles has been discovered as solution to these problems. Sport organisations have also started to engage in circular economy whether at product level, organisational level or an entire industry or ecosystem level. Mega sport events consume large amounts of resources in a short period of time and new solutions are needed how to organise these events more sustainably.

The Paris 2024 organisation committee is the first Olympics organisation committee having appointed a Circular Economy Officer. The Paris 2024 organisation committee has published a strategy for a more circular event in November 2023. In this article we will analyse these efforts against recent advances in circular economy research to scrutinize whether the Olympic Paris 2024 might have a more sustainable legacy thanks to circular economy principles.

Circular economy can be broken down to three key principles:

(1) eliminating the use of virgin resources by designing out waste and pollution;

(2) relying entirely on renewable resources as sole sources for energy;

(3) inventing regenerative designs embedded in socio-economic systems.

To implement these principles, circular strategies include prolonging use of products, materials and resources, and developing new models to satisfy needs (e.g., product as a service solutions). These principles should be applied by maintaining social equity and environmental stewardship.

A strategy for a more sustainable sport

The Paris 2024 organising committee published ten commitments to achieve “more circular games”. Most of these commitments correspond to the first principle of circular economy mentioned in the previous paragraph. 95% of the infrastructure at the Olympic Games is existing or temporary infrastructure. This allows to almost eliminate the use of virgin resources for sport infrastructure. The Paris 2024 organising committee is committed to maximise second lives for any material or products used during the games. Therefore, they require 100% of furniture from the venues given a second life and 100% of temporary infrastructure and structures will be given a second life. In addition, the Paris 2024 organising committee requires subcontractors that participate in tenders to include second life aspects in their proposal. This is something to applaud to as Paris 2024 organising committee replicate its circular economy ambitions down into the supply network of the event.

90% of marketing and signage products are redeployed, reused or recycled after the games. Finally, 80% of consumption waste is claimed to be avoided or recovered during the Games. The organizing committee aims for 50% reduction of plastic waste through single-use plastics as compared to previous games. While this is an honourable effort it does not solve the problem and does not engage in new creative and regenerative designs (e.g., replacing plastic-based products with organic material-based products). All these initiatives correspond to the idea avoiding virgin resource consumption and prolonging the life od materials, products and resources.

There is no mention concerning energy sources and the emissions or pollution generated through energy that is necessary to make the Olympic Games in Paris happen in the Ciruclar economy strategy of the Paris 2024 organising committee. Only little attention is paid to alternative consumption models such as rental, leasing and sharing. For example, 60% of the sports, technological and security equipment is leased. Local production is favoured but only to a very low extent as only 15% of licensed products are made in France and use organic or recycled materials. This is a rather poor result with the perspective of small and local productions and consumption circuits as further feature of the circular economy.

Overall, heads up to the Paris 2024 organising committee, there is a real, serious and respectable effort to make the Olympic Games more circular but the ball is already over to Los Angeles to make the Games truly circular!