By Andru Shively

’Sup, Paris? And by ’sup, we mean SUP: sing-use plastics.

Things have changed a lot since the City of Light last hosted the Summer Olympics in 1924. In the intervening century, breakdancing has been added to the competition (debuting in 2024 as ‘breaking’), while SUPs – equally unheard of in the Roaring Twenties – have now been disqualified. Red-carded. Ejected.

At the end of last month, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo announced a ban on SUPs during the Games, with the stated aim to make them “the first major event without single-use plastics”, and spectators with plastic bottles will reportedly not be admitted to competition sites.

In line with this, Olympic beverage partner Coca-Cola is set to provide refreshments via some 700 water and soda fountains installed throughout spectator and athlete areas, while also serving them in returnable glass bottles and reusable ‘eco-cups’. Très bien! Magnifique! Nobody’s perfect, however, as recycled plastic bottles will also be on hand to complement the other containers – not bad, considering the goal is to distribute some 18 mn drinks, half of them at no charge.

But as French newspaper Le Monde has uncovered, the eco-cups are really just the visible tips of icebergs made of plastic bottles. It reports that around 6.4 mn of the 9 mn drinks to be sold will come from plastic bottles, even if ultimately dressed up in eco-cups. The glass bottles and fountains, meanwhile, will only account for around 1.6 mn of distributed refreshments, Le Monde reports.

In its defense, Coca-Cola said that these behind-the-scenes bottles will be made of rPET and not given out to spectators, which is good, but things are much messier here than they appear.