Paris Olympics to Use Recycled Plastic for Chairs at Games

The 2024 Paris Olympics are coming up quickly and while we wait for the games to begin, the event is announcing new ways it plans to be sustainable and raise recycling awareness.

Next year, attendees of the Paris Olympics will be sitting on chairs that are made from plastic that has been recycled from local bins.

“There were shortages of virgin materials, which led a lot of manufacturers to switch to waste,” says Marius Hamelot, co-founder of Le Pavé, the eco-construction firm behind the initiative. “Plastics manufacturers stopped operating altogether, not because there were no more orders, but because there was no more material. So, they switched over to the waste sector.”

The chairs made from recycled plastics is just the latest way the Paris Olympics is committing to being sustainable and following its promise to be the greenest Olympics yet. Back in March, Olympic Organizers committed to cutting down emissions at the event and running the games without any air conditioning.

The recycled chairs will aim to reduce energy consumption and the production of new waste. The games plan to have around 11,000 seats made from recycled materials and 80% if the 100-plus tons of the recycled plastic will come from the yellow bins located in Seine-Saints-Denis.

“It’s collected in Seine-Saint-Denis, shredded in Seine-Saint-Denis, processed in Seine-Saint-Denis, all for a swimming pool that's still in the area,” says co-founder of Lemon Tri, Augustin Jaclin.

Plastics are being collected from the region’s schools and around five million soda bottle caps have been recovered for the initiative.

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