Paris is casting a spell on the world this summer as host of the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics.

With the Tour Eiffel beaming with light and a cleaner Seine doubling as an oversize swimming pool, everyone is falling (again) for the French capital. Not least, the 15 million fans who are taking to the city to watch their sport heroes strive for Olympic glory.

While such an exceptional number of visitors is welcome news for the economy, it also puts extra pressure on the city’s waste management system.

During the Games, athletes, fans and staff are bound to discard significant amount of rubbish, adding weight to the 3,000 tonnes of domestic waste that the local municipality picks up every day. Once that waste is collected, it can then be recycled, composted, incinerated, or – as a last resource – end up in a landfill.

When handling massive amounts of rubbish associated with large-scale events such as the Olympics, waste incineration with energy recovery can play a crucial role and be a city’s ally.

Waste-to-Energy in Paris

Also known as Waste-to-Energy (WtE), the process treats waste that cannot be recycled or re-used, turning it into energy and valuable secondary raw materials.

WtE significantly reduces the volume of rubbish that would end up in landfills, thereby conserving land space, mitigating environmental pollution, and removing materials that otherwise hamper recycling streams.

In addition, WtE contributes to the city’s energy needs. The energy recovered from rubbish incineration is used to generate heat, steam, and electricity, supporting Paris’s commitment to renewable energy sources and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

This dual benefit of waste reduction and energy production underscores the importance of incineration in achieving a sustainable and efficient waste management system for the Olympics and beyond.

In Paris, three waste incineration plants treat 1.8 million tonnes of waste annually. The energy that they produce provides heating to both private and public buildings, including 300,000 homes, the main hospital, the Louvre, and other museums.

Thanks to this energy production, every year Paris’s three WtE plants prevent the equivalent of 900,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. The three facilities also cover their own electricity needs.

The Isséane plant, located in Issy-les-Moulineaux, can process 510,000 tonnes of waste per year. As of 2018, the facility provided 1 million tons of steam and 46 GWh of electricity to the French capital.

Elsewhere near Paris, the plant in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine processes around 600 kt of household waste every year, recovering 1.2 million tonnes of steam and 10,000 MWh of electricity.

Boasting the title of Europe’s biggest WtE plant, the Ivry-sur-Seine facility treats the waste of 11,4 million people, up to 730,000 tonnes of household waste per year. After 55 years of service, Ivry-sur-Seine plant will stop operating in 2025.

An Olympic standard for waste

The Paris Olympics rubbish challenges this summer are not unlike those of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro and 2020 Tokyo Olympics. But the French capital is determined to create a new sustainability paradigm by reducing the overall amount of rubbish during the Games.

“The best waste is the waste that is not produced,” is the organisers’ motto, which is crucial to halving CO₂ emissions compared to the previous Olympics. To the rallying cry of “Do with less. Do it better”, the scheme taps into Paris’ existing circular economy scheme – it relies on responsible consumption, recycling, and the sorting of waste.

As part of the Paris Games’ environmental strategy, the consumer goods’ life cycle is extended. All catering equipment and infrastructure, for example, will be reused after the Games. Organisers are also reducing single-use plastic by 50%, cutting food waste by better matching quantities with needs, and redistributing leftover food.

Except for the newly built Aquatic Centre, the Olympics are taking place in 95% of pre-existing infrastructure.

The athletes’ medals are made of 100% recycled metal and include a fragment of the Eiffel Tower – placed in the middle of the medals’ design, the fragment comes from the iron discarded when the monument underwent renovation works in the 20th century.

The Games are also powered by 100% renewable energy, while 400km of new bike lanes are ramping up the city’s efforts to promote sustainable mobility. To minimise transport carbon footprint, all venues can be reached by public transport and by bike.

With the Games over in September, rubbish will be the leftover witness of Olympic triumph and disaster, lying bare at the bottom of some bin. But if all goes according to plan, this year’s waste will be considerably less than in previous editions of the event.

Materials bearing the memory of Olympic glory will find new use and a new lease on life, as Paris leaves a legacy for the Games to come.