Can mega-events be truly sustainable?

The 2024 Summer Paris Olympics has ended after 19 days of intense competitions, with the Hong Kong team for bringing home four medals—two gold and two bronze. Over 10,000 athletes gathered worldwide in the capital city of France to show off their prowess in various sporting events. This is the third Summer Olympics that Paris has hosted; and this year, there is one particular gold medal that the organiser is vying for: To host the most sustainable Olympics yet.

The Paris 2024 medals are made from recycled metals, with the center iron piece coming from parts of the Eiffel Tower removed during renovation (Image source: Reuters)

Held once every four years, the Olympics games are an economic boon to local businesses, as millions of spectators are attracted to the hosting city. Preparing the sports facilities and welcoming the huge influx of visitors however also translates to an enormous strain on the environment. London 2012 and Rio 2016 for example emitted an average of 3.5 million tonnes of carbon.[1]

To show that the Olympics can be done more responsibly, Paris incorporated eco-design into the venue and has promised to give a second life for all equipment and furniture after the games.[2]60% of the food offered to the public were vegetarian, with much of the ingredients sourced locally and none imported by air—the most carbon-intensive mode of transport.[3] Though teams were later allowed to bring their own air conditioning, the athletes village is originally designed to only use a water-based geothermal cooling system to keep rooms at least 6°C cooler than the outside temperature.[4]Through these various measures, the organiser hopes to halve the emissions of Paris 2024 compared to previous games.[5]

Athletes’ rooms at Paris 2024 are defined by cardboard beds and no air conditioning (Image source: Xinhua)

We won’t know whether Paris has held the greenest Olympics yet until the post-games sustainability report. We do however see a limit to how sustainable mega-events can get without addressing the "mega” part of the equation. Experts have been calling for future games to scale down in size, which would additionally help to reduce cost overruns and the displacement of people for new facilities.[6] Tokyo 2020 for example reported a 800,000 tonne-drop in emissions, as pandemic restrictions meant the event had almost no spectators.[7] Experts have also suggested rotating between a small list of host cities to make use of already-built venues.

Tokyo 2020 opened to a mostly empty stadium as both domestic and foreign spectators were banned from attending (Image source: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Hong Kong is no stranger to mega-events either. The government claimed the city will attract 1.7 million visitors across at least 210 mega-events in this year alone,[8]which are also creating large volumes of food and plastic waste.[9] The city will also host eight sporting events at the 2025 National Games. While Hong Kong is unlikely to build cardboard beds or set up geothermal cooling for athletes, it can still take note of the other things Paris 2024 did well to minimise event footprint, such as offering more plant-based food and utilising existing venues as much as possible. Of course, government shouldn’t just rely on the glam and glitter of mega-events to build up Hong Kong as a prime tourism destination, the city can instead develop and promote its country parks and other cultural landmarks to attract tourists.