The world’s finest athletes will obtain their gold medals on the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Video games this summer season whereas standing on trash. Recycled meals containers, to be actual.
The silver-colored Olympic podiums, at present being raised throughout France, had been made in a small manufacturing unit on the outskirts of Paris by a start-up referred to as Le Pavé utilizing one hundred pc recycled plastic. It’s a primary for any Olympic Video games.
“There may be an overabundance of plastic that’s harming the atmosphere, however which additionally has confirmed financial potential if it may be repurposed,” mentioned Maurius Hamelot, 29, a co-founder of Le Pavé, as he darted round his plant, a transformed former metal foundry.
That’s not all: Le Pavé additionally made 11,000 bleacher seats for 2 close by sports activities arenas that had been constructed for the Video games — all manufactured from used shampoo bottles and tens of millions of multicolored bottle caps.
Just some years in the past, the corporate had solely three workers. However an sudden name from Olympic organizers led to a beefy contract, and the corporate has expanded to a workers of 34 and opened two factories. Within the course of, it has change into a poster baby for the Paris Olympic committee, which has pledged to make these Olympic Video games the greenest in historical past.
Le Pavé is a part of an more and more dynamic start-up tradition that has been rising in France, seeded by bold insurance policies from President Emmanuel Macron’s authorities to rework the financial system with new industries specializing in clear expertise and a inexperienced transition.
“It was thought-about a start-up in case you simply developed software program,” mentioned Jim Pasquet, 31, Le Pavé’s different co-founder. “We’re a brand new kind of commercial start-up, targeted on environmental wants, and our objective is to change into a European chief.”
Mr. Hamelot had already been working to transform plastic waste collected in Parisian neighborhoods into high-quality parts for the constructing sector. As an structure scholar on the College of Versailles, he had set his sights on the development business, one of many greatest sources of carbon emissions.
“The 2 issues widespread in building are waste and trash, all over the place on this planet,” he mentioned. “How do you reinvent the supplies used to construct and that received’t hurt the atmosphere?”
Mr. Hamelot purchased a used pizza oven and started to experiment with melting discarded plastic from digital detritus, together with outdated espresso makers and phone handsets that he chopped up in a blender. In 2018, he and Mr. Pasquet, buddies since childhood, created Le Pavé and received a sequence of innovation competitions that obtained them into La Ruche, an incubator in Paris with a concentrate on social entrepreneurship, digital expertise and crafts and tradition, the place they raised modest funding.
By 2019, they’d patented a thermal compression molding expertise to be used within the constructing sector. Quickly after, Mr. Hamelot obtained a name from Solideo, the French firm overseeing infrastructure for the 2024 Video games, together with a brand new Olympic Village within the northern suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis that was designed to advertise zero waste.
The organizers, who had been searching for to slash planet-warming emissions in half in contrast with earlier Video games, requested if they might be capable of produce 11,000 chairs for a brand new Olympic Aquatic Heart being constructed to host swimming, and for the brand new Adidas Area, which might maintain gymnastics and badminton competitions.
“It was an unbelievable alternative,” Mr. Pasquet mentioned.
Seeded with cash from BPI, a French state funding financial institution that focuses on start-ups, they settled into an deserted metal manufacturing unit in Aubervilliers, a low-income suburb of Paris close to many Olympic venues.
Mr. Hamelot and Mr. Pasquet labored with 50 native recycling firms to collect used plastic, experimenting with dozens of prototypes and stress testing earlier than inking a last take care of Solideo in 2022 for the stadium chairs.
Armed with a philosophy that asserts working regionally can have an enormous social affect, they employed workers from Seine-Saint-Denis, together with individuals who had been on long-term unemployment, in addition to an asylum seeker and a former prisoner looking forward to a recent begin.
The corporate added an academic dimension, asking a nongovernmental group, Lemon Tree, to incorporate 50 elementary and center faculties within the Ile-de-France area. Round 1,700 schoolchildren collected a million yellow bottle caps that had been used to infuse the black-and-white stadium chairs with flecks of shade.
As they realized about recycling, the kids peppered Mr. Hamelot with powerful questions concerning the environmental affect of plastics and the best way to scale back carbon emissions. “The children had been vital and critically concerned,” he mentioned.
All informed, Le Pavé used 100 metric tons of recycled bottles and bottle caps to make panels for the 11,000 stadium seats, which had been pressed into kind by a French firm specializing in area seating. To create the panels used for the 68 silver-hued Olympic victory podiums, Le Pavé used 18 metric tons of recycled plastic and plastic foam meals containers.
On a latest day, eight individuals bustled across the manufacturing unit in Aubervilliers, the place a rainbow of recycled plastic beads and chips stood in big sacks. Some staff used a forklift to feed beads right into a particular heater, whereas others guided the completed panels by a slicing machine.
The recycling course of itself does depart a carbon footprint, together with from heating the ovens and slicing the plastic panels. Even so, Mr. Pasquet mentioned, it emits a lot much less carbon dioxide than utilizing virgin plastic does.
“We’re making one thing stunning out of outdated trash that’s cluttering the planet,” he mentioned.
They’re opening a second small manufacturing unit within the Burgundy area of jap France, and are elevating funding to open two extra within the west and within the south. As the federal government seeks to reindustrialize France, Le Pavé’s purpose is to create jobs by opening small factories, Mr. Pasquet mentioned, including that the outdated mannequin of mega factories not met right this moment’s environmental and social challenges.
Le Pavé’s Aubervilliers manufacturing unit served as an exclamation level to that assertion: All the foremost gear was painted vivid pink as a substitute of commercial grey. “We wish these to be the brand new colours of business, to get away from the outdated picture,” he mentioned.
Not too long ago, the Elyseé Palace, the official residence of the president, put in an ornamental wall made by Le Pavé. The corporate can be producing panels for main French furnishings retailers and has tasks within the pipeline to make parquet-style flooring for houses and buildings.
Realizing that their concepts have come to life for the Olympic Video games has been an enormous motivator. “We see that we have now a chance to construct one thing that can final for years and years,” Mr. Hamelot mentioned. “That is about one thing that’s larger than all of us.”
