Several weeks after the euphoria and congratulations, a first controversy broke out over what happened behind the scenes of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
It was five months ago. In the summer of 2024, after years of intense preparation and doubts, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games were probably one of the best Olympics in history. From the open-air opening ceremony on the Seine to the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games a few weeks later, France experienced an enchanted parenthesis and shone throughout the world. The results were praised and even considered perfect… Or almost.
After the emotions, the congratulations and the thanks, what happened behind the scenes of the “spectacle” and the sporting exploits begins to be the subject of suspicion. Some associations complain about the consequences of the event and the management of certain aspects of the Games. This is the case of the France Nature Environnement association which filed a complaint on November 22, according to information from Le Monde, for “deceptive commercial practices” during the Paris Olympics. The American brand Coca-Cola and a gigantic aberration are targeted.
While the Paris Olympics have been presented as the greenest since the creation of the Games, France Nature Environnement believes that the multinational has not respected its promises to reduce the use of plastic. What happened during the Olympics would even be “likely to mislead the consumer”. Throughout the period, the brand had in fact implemented returnable cups to avoid the use of plastic bottles. Messages were posted in front of the refreshment bars to encourage this reduction. “For Paris 2024, we are helping to reduce packaging. Don’t forget to bring your returnable cup!”
But what consumers didn’t know was that the majority of these millions of cups were filled from… plastic bottles! In detail and according to a note from the interministerial delegation to the JOP, on the
10 million drinks planned for sale, more than 6 million were from bottles. A “gross greenwashing operation to restore its image as the world’s leading plastic polluter”, launches France Nature Environnement.
The group assured before the Games that “the bottles used to fill the cups would be captured at the source to be sorted, compacted or crushed before then being recycled”. A misleading argument too, according to Axèle Gibert, coordinator of the waste network within FNE, who believes in The World that “we are not eliminating the disposable”. “Very quickly, they are no longer recyclable and we have to add virgin plastic to produce recycled bottles,” she says.
Another sensitive question: what happened to the 13 million cups ultimately used during the Games and which theoretically had to be reused? Asked by Le Monde, Coca-Cola did not give a response, but testimonies suggest that many were thrown away or kept as souvenirs by spectators.
As a reminder, Coca-Cola launched a campaign on the theme “a world without waste”. “By 2030, we want to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every bottle or can sold in the world. No matter where it comes from. Each package must be able to be used more than once. This is our vision of a world without waste”, we can read on the group’s website.