Tour de France — The Environmental impacts of the ultimate test
Tags: Environmental Impact, Cycling, Environmental Issues, Waste, Tour De France

Tour de France — The Environmental impacts of the ultimate test Callum Jul 15·3 min read

The tour de France is widely regarded as one of the biggest sporting events in the world. The annual tournament is 23 days long and features 21 different races, covering all of France from Brest to Paris. With the scale and hype of the event, each stage brings large crowds of spectators cheering on the riders. Not only does this event have a large scale social footprint but also an environmental one however.

The Tour often falls under regular complaints for ecological and environmental reasons. These include :

Fans movement from city to city, often travelling via plane or car, as well as all the teams and riders

Promotional gifts thrown to fans, often wrapped in plastic

The sheer amount of plastic bottles and wrappers discarded by the riders

Overflowing rubbish bins at Tour de France

Now, let’s look at each of these points in turn and how they relate to the Tour de France specifically. Firstly, fans moving from city to city is not restricted to the Tour. Many tournaments, particularly the big football tournaments, involve fans moving from city to city. However, the sheer scale of it is a concern, especially when combined with the other issues.

On the plastic issue, plastic bottles are used to give riders a drink during the races. While there are discard zones and people employed to do post-stage collections, the sheer number of bottles used and discarded (estimated to be nearly 10000) and the amount of ground covered means that it’s almost impossible to locate them all. The Tour has been looking into more eco-friendly alternatives for these items. There are energy food products available in eco-friendly wrapping, an example being Lucho Dillitos (https://luchodillitos.com/). So there are definitely promising alternatives for the tour to consider. However, the plastic bottle issue is a troubling one and one that continues to dominate discussion.

On the other hand, it must be noted that the tour is working hard to clean up its act and is introducing new rules to be more environmentally friendly. This includes fines or even disqualifications to riders for discarding bottles outside of the designated zones, 100% of the race vehicles being electric and elimination of plastic in corporate gifts. The bottle rule has come under heavy scrutiny, however, by fans and riders alike as being against the tradition of the sport, being too harsh a punishment and removing a fan experience from the event, a rider giving a child or big fan a souvenir. This debate is still on going and is not exactly ideal for the sport’s long term goals of reducing its carbon footprint.

It certainly seems that the Tour is taking the right steps to make the event more environmentally friendly, though it is proving an uphill battle similar to the ascent of Mont Ventoux. Hopefully, the sport can continue to develop and bring about change for the better. If you’d like to read some more about this problem and to read more about the steps taken so far, please check out the links below.

Guardian article discussing the latest changes : https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jun/25/cycling-tour-de-france-working-hard-green-up-its-act

Interesting article on the water bottle issue : https://www.33fuel.com/blogs/default-blog/news-tour-de-france-water-bottles-environment

The new rules brought in for the 2021 Tour: https://www.letour.fr/en/the-race/riding-info-the-future