The world’s greatest athletes will obtain their gold medals on the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer season whereas standing on trash. Recycled meals containers, to be precise.
The silver-colored Olympic podiums, at the moment being raised throughout France, had been made in a small manufacturing unit on the outskirts of Paris by a start-up known as Le Pavé utilizing 100% recycled plastic. It’s a primary for any Olympic Games.
“There is an overabundance of plastic that’s harming the setting, 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 Games — all manufactured from used shampoo bottles and hundreds of thousands of multicolored bottle caps.
Just a number of years in the past, the corporate had solely three workers. But 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. In the method, it has develop into a poster youngster for the Paris Olympic committee, which has pledged to make these Olympic 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 formidable insurance policies from President Emmanuel Macron’s authorities to rework the financial system with new industries specializing in clear know-how and a inexperienced transition.
“It was thought of a start-up should you simply developed software program,” mentioned Jim Pasquet, 31, Le Pavé’s different co-founder. “We are a brand new sort of commercial start-up, centered on environmental wants, and our purpose is to develop into a European chief.”
Mr. Hamelot had already been working to transform plastic waste collected in Parisian neighborhoods into high-quality elements for the constructing sector. As an structure scholar on the University of Versailles, he had set his sights on the development trade, one of many largest sources of carbon emissions.
“The two issues widespread in building are waste and trash, in every single place on the earth,” he mentioned. “How do you reinvent the supplies used to construct and that received’t hurt the setting?”
Mr. Hamelot purchased a used pizza oven and started to experiment with melting discarded plastic from digital detritus, together with previous espresso makers and phone handsets that he chopped up in a blender. In 2018, he and Mr. Pasquet, associates since childhood, created Le Pavé and received a sequence of innovation competitions that received them into La Ruche, an incubator in Paris with a deal with social entrepreneurship, digital know-how and crafts and tradition, the place they raised modest funding.
By 2019, that they had patented a thermal compression molding know-how to be used within the constructing sector. Soon after, Mr. Hamelot received a name from Solideo, the French firm overseeing infrastructure for the 2024 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 looking for to slash planet-warming emissions in half in contrast with earlier Games, requested if they’d be capable to produce 11,000 chairs for a brand new Olympic Aquatic Center being constructed to host swimming, and for the brand new Adidas Arena, which might maintain gymnastics and badminton competitions.
“It was an unimaginable 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 corporations to collect used plastic, experimenting with dozens of prototypes and stress testing earlier than inking a remaining take care of Solideo in 2022 for the stadium chairs.
Armed with a philosophy that asserts working regionally can have a giant social influence, 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 anticipating a recent begin.
The firm added an academic dimension, asking a nongovernmental group, Lemon Tree, to incorporate 50 elementary and center colleges within the Ile-de-France area. Around 1,700 schoolchildren collected a million yellow bottle caps that had been used to infuse the black-and-white stadium chairs with flecks of coloration.
As they realized about recycling, the youngsters peppered Mr. Hamelot with robust questions concerning the environmental influence of plastics and methods to cut back carbon emissions. “The youngsters had been crucial 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 enviornment 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 current 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 via a chopping machine.
The recycling course of itself does depart a carbon footprint, together with from heating the ovens and chopping the plastic panels. Even so, Mr. Pasquet mentioned, it consumes a lot much less carbon dioxide than utilizing virgin plastic does.
“We’re making one thing lovely out of previous trash that’s cluttering the planet,” he mentioned.
They are opening a second small manufacturing unit within the Burgundy area of japanese 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 intention is to create jobs by opening small factories, Mr. Pasquet mentioned, including that the previous mannequin of mega factories not met in the present day’s environmental and social challenges.
Le Pavé’s Aubervilliers manufacturing unit served as an exclamation level to that assertion: All the main gear was painted vibrant pink as an alternative of commercial grey. “We need these to be the brand new colours of trade, to get away from the previous picture,” he mentioned.
Recently, the Elyseé Palace, the official residence of the president, put in an ornamental wall made by Le Pavé. The firm can also be producing panels for main French furnishings retailers and has tasks within the pipeline to make parquet-style flooring for properties and buildings.
Knowing that their concepts have come to life for the Olympic Games has been an enormous motivator. “We see that we now have a possibility to construct one thing that may final for years and years,” Mr. Hamelot mentioned. “This is about one thing that’s larger than all of us.”
