2024-09-23 17:15:18
Were you unable to crisscross the Parisian asphalt during the Marathon for All of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games? You have the opportunity to make up for it starting October 13, with one of the many races crisscrossing the capital, the 46e edition of the 20 km of Paris. But bring your water bottle. During the press conference to present the event on Monday, September 23, the deputy for sports at Paris City Hall, Pierre Rabadan, confirmed that the ban on single-use plastic bottles had come into force.
“In Paris, you will no longer be able to organize a race if you use plastic bottlesit’s as simple as that, assured the 44-year-old former rugby player, in comments reported by The team. This was one of the goals of the Olympic legacy. We need to reduce the use of single-use plastic in our daily lives, and sport needs to do the same. It’s an evolution, and even a revolution for the organizers.”
No fewer than thirteen races will be organized in Paris between now and December 31, for a total of around fifty events per year – including the Paris Marathon and the half-marathon, which see around 50,000 runners. In these races, particularly the longest ones, more than a million bottles are sold each year to supply the runners – “who usually only drink two or three sips before throwing it away. I know this because it happened to me too when I was racing.”insisted Pierre Rabadan – according to the city hall’s count. So out with individual bottles and other cans or cartons, instead make way for reusable flasks and cups. The city of Paris has invested in a stock of 100,000 of these cups that it can lend to running race organizers.
“Zero single-use plastic” goal for the Olympic Games
During the Olympic marathon, however, competitors were granted an exemption to continue using bottles – to avoid the risks of contamination, or even doping, according to the organizing committee – and elite athletes could continue to benefit from them. “The subject is the mass and all the other participants who do not play their season on a race”said the Paris sports deputy.
Inspired by initiatives taken in Munich, Amsterdam, San Francisco, but especially by the countryside refill London (2018) across the Channel or even 20 km from Brussels, the city has been working since 2019 to reach the objective of “zero single-use plastic”for hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which have claimed to be the most ecological in history. And bearers of a legacy to be perpetuated.
However, through the play of the “world” sponsors of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), it is the American giant Coca-Cola, first “plastic polluter” of the world according to the 2023 ranking of the NGO Break Free from Plastic, which had been entrusted with the exclusive distribution of drinks at the 2024 Olympic Games. Many associations, including France Nature Environnement, Zero Waste France and No Plastic in My Sea, have awarded the medal of the greenwashing to the IOC partner: the soda producer highlighted its fountains, returnable cups and glass bottles. But more than 40% of the total drinks distributed were poured into an ecocup from… a plastic bottle. Those that we should no longer see at the Parisian races.
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