What will happen to 6 million items from the Paris Olympic Games?

The French capital tries to do good on its promise to reuse and reduce waste

The Olympic Games are over, the crowds are gone but all of the equipment is still there standing now empty as a souvenir of the grandest sports spectacle that took place during the last two and a half weeks. What will happen to it? Will Paris live up to its promise of organizing the greenest Games ever?

Apparently, organizing the Olympic Games meant commissioning some 6 million items to make the entire equipment. These include everything from tennis balls to chairs and stages to the sand used in the beach volleyball courts, among many other things.

For starters, some of the equipment will be reused during the upcoming Paralympic Games from 26 August to 8 September, also taking place in Paris. In a sense, the Olympic spirit still lives on in the French capital until the end of the summer.

Once the Paralympic Games are over, however, the organizers claim that 90% of the equipment will find new homes and will be reused breaking away with a wasteful tradition from previous global events where structures would be built only to stay abandoned for years.

Second life for Olympic equipment

It’s true that it is hard to make a completely sustainable and green event at such a large scale, but the Paris organizers sure did try to forge a path that can inform the way of doing things better in the future.

For instance, the sand used for the beach volleyball matches near the Eiffel Tower has been promised to a club in the Paris region.

The more than 14,000 mattresses made from recycled plastic used in the Olympic Village will be given to the French army, while their cardboard bases will be recycled.

Likewise, sports equipment, such as tennis balls and athletics equipment will be donated to French sports clubs.

Office furniture leased from French company Lyreco will be taken back and used by the firm to launch a new second-hand furniture business.

Most impressively, two swimming pools, the climbing wall and the skateboarding parks from the Games will be dug out and moved to provide opportunities to practice sports for the residents of the lower-income Seine-Saint-Denis suburb.

Finally, sports fans will have the chance to get their own piece of the Olympics by buying things like torches made for the relay before the Games or different flags.