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The 2024 Paris Olympic games hosted some big victories: American swimmer Katie Ledecky won her ninth gold medal, and gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik won the first men’s individual medal for Team USA in the last eight years.
And there was another big win, too—one that wasn’t revealed until last month: The 2024 summer games had a more than 50% smaller carbon footprint than the London 2012 and Rio 2016 summer games.
Contributing to that feat were the sustainability initiatives of the Paris games, which included repurposing the wi-fi terminals and network switches provided for the games by French telecom company Orange so they can be used by La Poste, France’s national postal service. Orange was the exclusive network provider for the Olympics and managed all 120 sites out of which the events operated.
Jerome Goulard, the chief sustainability officer for Orange Business, told Tech Brew that the Paris games were a huge undertaking for Orange and that during the opening ceremony along the Seine, the company operated boats with 5G private networks on board to make sure there was adequate coverage. And once the games ended, the Orange team rushed in to deinstall and collect as many of their wi-fi terminals and network switches as possible to refurbish them for their next act.
Orange
Now, the equipment will be repurposed for La Poste to use as part of its connectivity network, which fills a gap in the service’s wi-fi infrastructure and allows Orange to meet the sustainability requirements the Olympics asked of it.
“In the requirements from the Olympic Games, they asked for commitment on the carbon footprint of what we had to install…10 kilotons of CO2 equivalent maximum for the entire technical rollout,” Goulard said. “Collecting the equipment at the end of the games and then reusing, we ended with 8.5 kilotons for the whole project.”
Repurposing equipment is a huge pillar of Orange’s overall sustainability strategy, Goulard said. That’s because the company’s Scope 3 emissions, or emissions that are a result of the equipment Orange sells, account for more than 80% of the company’s total CO2 footprint.
“We collect around 80% of all the equipment [sold to customers],” Goulard told Tech Brew. “We refurbish it, and then we reinstall for all the new programs and projects that we implement for customers.”