FOR two scorching days in Paris last May, the Champs-Élysées was closed to traffic, covered over with grass. Visitors traipsed through a forest of Lebanese cedar trees and snapped photos of goat pens and stacked pyramids of vegetables, with the Arc de Triomphe looming above. It was all part of Nature Capitale, a large-scale installation created by the French street artist Gad Weil, who timed it to coincide with International Biodiversity Day, an annual event sponsored by the United Nations. The spectacle drew two million visitors, among them two surprise guests: the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his wife, Carla Bruni, who wore jeans and an untucked oxford shirt with rolled-up sleeves, providing a bit of barnyard chic in the Eighth Arrondissement.
Journeys
Eco-Paris
The Champs-Élysées was turned into a green carpet by the French artist Gad Weil last May.
By ADAM H. GRAHAM
Published: April 8, 2011
Ed Alcock for The New York Times
At Marché Biologique on the Boulevard Raspail, Paris's first all-organic market.
The event — the next Nature Capitale is scheduled for June in Lyon — was equal parts ecological celebration and fund-raiser for two groups: Jeunes Agriculteurs, an organization of young French farmers, and France Bois Forêt, devoted to the French forest and timber industries. In typical French fashion, it also included a protest against a dip in agriculture prices. Despite its reputation for fur and foie gras, Paris had begun to embrace the ecological movement with the earnestness of leading eco-minded cities like Copenhagen and Vancouver.
Paris’s green movement may have arrived fashionably late, but it has taken hold and is growing fast. In 2009, the capital edged into 10th place on a list of Europe’s greenest cities (released at a United Nations conference and presented by Siemens, the German conglomerate) — aided in part by the Vélib’ bike-rental program and the costly partial conversion of the city’s taxi fleet to hybrids.
Throngs of eco-cafes, bio marchés (organic markets) and green wine shops have opened citywide. There are rooftop honeybee programs at the Opéra Garnier and the Grand Palais. New eco-minded hotels continue to open, while old ones retrofit their facilities for low-carbon living. The Champs-Élysées began using LED lights during the Christmas season, reducing energy consumption by 90 percent. And in a particularly visible change, the Eiffel Tower shortened its hourly display of sparkling lights from 10 minutes to 5, extending the life of the tower’s thousands of bulbs signficantly.
If all that weren’t enough, this fall should see the much-anticipated debut of the automated electric-car rental program Autolib’ (autolib-paris.fr), which mimics Vélib’, letting users swipe their credit card, and voilà, go.
All of this change was necessary, say eco-minded advocates. “The little brown boxes on the Champs revealed the truth,” said Erwan Maizy, founder of Ecovisit Paris (ecovisitparis.com), which offers customizable hybrid tours of the city’s greener sights. “The boxes have been monitoring air quality since 1979, and the results revealed a significant deterioration,” he said from the driver’s seat of his silver Prius.
The enthusiasm of Mr. Maizy, a self-professed écolo (ecological supporter), is contagious. He went on about the energy-producing windmills in Belleville and water turbines on the Seine, as he quietly glided to a stop at Patrick Blanc’s “Mur Végétal,” a vertical garden installed on the walls of Jean Nouvel’s Quai Musée Branly — one of 82 such walls in Paris.
Many credit Bertrand Delanoë, mayor of Paris, for the shift. He championed Vélib’, expanded electric tramways and recently extended Métro hours to 2 a.m. on weekends to discourage car use. One hundred forty-eight parks and gardens have stopped using pesticides during his term, making Paris’s one of the first city park systems in Europe to go organic.
But Mr. Delanoë cannot be credited for the changes to the city’s dining scene, as evolving ecological concepts have crept onto menus over the last few years. “Agriculture raisonnée is a new concept,” said Frédéric Hubig, owner of Jeanne A, a restaurant in the 11th Arrondissement, the epicenter of écolo activity. Mr. Hubig recently opened an épicerie à manger, which uses ingredients from farmers who are intimate with their terroir.
“All the animals I use are brought up in open areas, feed themselves as they please and grow at their own rhythm without hormones or being gavé,” he said, using the term for the force-feeding of animals. “I don’t necessarily want the organic certification. Quality and taste are my first criteria.” (Even his foie gras is an “agriculture raisonnée” version, made with slowly fed, field-raised geese, producing a smaller, firmer lobe.)
Another restaurateur, Pierre-Henri Castets, warned about so-called greenwashing. His spot, BioArt (it closed late last year), used 100 percent organic ingredients certified by Agence Bio, a group that promotes organic farming. “There are a lot of fake green businesses,” he said. “Some are only in it for the money. But food is religion here in France. You need to have this in your heart.”
And so, with Earth Day approaching on April 22, here are a few ways eco-minded travelers can make their carbon footprint in Paris as light as possible.
BEFORE YOU GO
Nouvelles Valeurs (nouvelles-valeurs.com) is an online restaurant guide that lists the restaurants and purveyors it deems most eco-friendly, using search criteria like seasonality and the use of organic ingredients. A popular new dating site called Amours Bio (amours-bio.com) promises to connect singles who share interests like animal rights and veganism. NightStudio’s bioGuide app lets visitors use their iPhones to locate eco-retailers. And Ecovisit Paris offers informative, one-hour tours of the city’s greener sights (ecovisitparis.com; 80 euros, or $110.40 at $1.38 to the euro).
HOTELS
The low-budget, high-design Solar Hôtel offers free bikes and organic breakfasts (solarhotel.fr; doubles from 59 euros). Admire the views of the Eiffel Tower from the cozy Hôtel Gavarni, the first Paris property to carry an Ecolabel designation from the European Union; a stay includes an organic, fair-trade breakfast (gavarni.com; doubles from 110 euros). Emphasizing natural handcrafted materials, the relaxed and stylish Hidden Hotel offers natural, organic Coco-Mat mattresses topped with linen sheets (hidden-hotel.com; doubles from 145 euros). The luxurious Hôtel Fouquet’s Barrière has a hybrid limousine for hire and electric and nonelectric bikes for rent (fouquets-barriere.com; doubles from 622 euros).
For something a bit different, the Fédération des Professionnels Parisiens de la Chambre d’Hôtes à Paris offers an eco-friendly B&B; category, which includes a 25-criteria evaluation for inclusion (authenticbandbparis.com).
FOOD
The Marché Biologique on Boulevard Raspail (Sundays, 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.) was Paris’s first all-organic market. Two additional bio marchés have since joined its ranks: Marché Bio Batignolles (Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.) and Marché Bio Brancusi (Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.). On the dining scene, Le Meurice’s Michelin three-star restaurant offers a Terroir Parisien lunch menu, emphasizing locally sourced ingredients (228, rue de Rivoli; lemeurice.com; four-course lunch menu without wine, 90 euros). For a satisfying snack, try Moisan, an expanding chain of organic bakeries found throughout Paris (painmoisan.fr).
SHOPPING
Honoré des Prés is a boutique parfumeur that offers organic, phthalate- and chemical-free scents (available in Printemps’ Scent Room, 64, boulevard Haussmann; honoredespres.com). Jewelry Ethical Luxury uses mercury- and cyanide-free precious metals sourced from open-air mines in Colombia (sold at Colette, 213, rue St.-Honoré; colette.fr). The home décor shop Merci sells eco-friendly items like Jérôme Dreyfuss’s “agricouture” bags and disposable plates made from biodegradable sugarcane pulp (111, boulevard Beaumarchais; merci-merci.com).
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