When an athlete climbs onto the podium in Paris 2024 Olympics, he’s climbing on top of trash. All the competition podiums are the result of recycling bottles, pots and everything else made of plastic. The initiative, yet another to make this the most ecological edition in the history of the Olympic Games, is a project by a small startup, Le Pavélocated in the metropolitan region of Paris.
“We were contacted for the Olympic Games in 2019, while the company was still young, we only had one year, so our big challenge was taking on a project that represented a huge workload”, says Lucas Philliponneau, staff director at Le Pavé.
Since then, the small recycling factory has become a silo of incessant production: in addition to producing all the podiums for the Olympics, the company manufactured around 11,000 seats for the Porte de la Chapelle Arena and the Olympic Aquatics Center, structures which will not be dismantled at the end of the competition. “This represented around 100 tons of recycled materials,” explains Philiponneau.
To win the position of ecological supplier for the Olympic Games, the company met an old demand — plastic recycling — with a new approach. At Le Pavé, plastic is transformed by thermocompression, an idea that began with a pizza oven and the creativity of architect Marius Hamelot and business administrator Jim Pasquet, founders of the company.
“We received crushed plastic and transformed this material into plates without adding glue, using just a little heat to give cohesion,” says Philiponneau. The idea also favors the continuation of the product’s recycling cycle, since only a single material is part of its composition. “Each type of plastic has specific characteristics”, says the company director.
The detail is present on the podiums that appear on TV, websites and social networks. Modular, light in color, the pulpit is not a single-purpose mess (see more photos in the gallery above). “We do not add glue, binders or additives to our products; it is 100% recycled and also 100% recyclable,” says Phliponneau. “The idea is to accept that materials have strengths and weaknesses, and find the appropriate application without adding components that compromise recyclability. This is what we call eco-conception.”
The production line is lean. Shredded plastic arrives at the plant daily. A machine is responsible for mixing and ensuring the uniformity of the raw material. Another machine carries out the thermocompression process, which transforms a granulated mass into plates. The sequence closes with the completion of these panels: sanding and cutting.
“What comes out of our factory are exclusively large slabs with thicknesses varying between 8 and 15 mm”, says Philiponneau, who has been registering orders from other companies for some years. “These boards are then sent to designers, architects and contractors to be crafted according to their needs.”
In the run-up to the 2024 Olympics, Le Pavé increased its number of employees from 3 to 35, with some coming from disadvantaged backgrounds — vulnerable immigrants and former prisoners. The factory has also expanded: the Paris plant, which currently measures just over 100 m², will have a unit three times larger in Bourgogne, far from the Parisian capital.
The Olympic opportunity propelled the startup to a unique feat. Philiponneau and his co-workers did not stand on the podium, but were invited to sit in the seats they created at the opening of the Porte de la Chapelle Arena. “We were very proud to see our products used during the Olympic Games,” recalls the director. “This is a rare chance, something that only happened over a hundred years ago.”
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