New era: Paris aims to hold greenest Olympic Games

Beneath the undulating wooden roof of the Paris Olympics' new aquatics centre, the architect Laure Mériaud hoped the groundbreaking low-carbon building would bring a kind of calm to the intersection of motorways near the Stade de France stadium in the suburb of St-Denis.

- Angelique Chrisafis

"It's not just about technical innovation," she said. "It's about creating a more pleasant, greener space for local people here after the Games." Organisers of the Paris Olympics starting in July - vow they will be the "greenest ever Games", halving the carbon footprint of London 2012 and Rio 2016 from their average of 3.5m tonnes of CO2 to about 1.75m tonnes.

Mostly using existing stadiums instead of embarking on the giant Olympic building projects of the past, making athletes' bedside tables from recycled badminton shuttlecocks and providing dinner plates without logos which can be repurposed after the Games, the Paris committee has said it is setting a precedent for cleaner global sporting events.

But environmental analysts warn that the very act of holding a planetary sporting event like the Olympics has to be completely reconsidered if the world is to reach net zero targets in 2050. In future, the sporting events could be spread over various locations instead of the current model of millions of spectators flying to one city, they suggest.

"The single most important decision we have made is not to build," said Georgina Grenon, the environmental excellence director for Paris 2024. Unlike the big building projects of the Rio, London and Tokyo Games, 95% of the sites used in Paris are existing venues or temporary structures.