Tokyo's 2020 Olympic Medals Are Made Out of Recycled Home Electronics
Next year, when the world's most elite athletes convene in Tokyo for the 2020 Summer Olympics, the medals awarded to the best of the best will be made of...old electronics? Well, they're made of gold, silver, and bronze, obviously, but next year, thanks to a unique program, the metals used to make the medals will be extracted from the inner workings of recycled home electronics. Pretty cool, right?
Recycling Metal for Medals
The landmark recycling initiative, called the Tokyo 2020 Medal Project, collected nearly 79,000 tons of outdated consumer electronics over the course of two years. The discarded devices were donated by Japanese corporations, local authorities, and private citizens, who offered up their old mobile phones, digital cameras, and laptops in yellow donation boxes placed all around the country. Every medal presented at the Games will be molded using the 32kg of gold, 3,500kg of silver, and 2,200kg that were extracted from the electronics. All in all, the program raked in more than $3 million worth of precious metal from more than five million devices.
Tokyo 2020's Other Eco Initiatives
And the medals are not the only sustainability aspect of the Tokyo games, either: According to olympic.org, the medal podiums themselves will be constructed from recycled household and marine plastic waste, and the uniforms for the pre-Games Olympic Torch Relay will be partially made from recycled plastic bottles. It's all part of the Tokyo Olympic committee's hopes for their city's 2020 event to be "the most environmentally friendly and sustainable Games so far." The theme the committee chose was "Be better, together—for the planet and the people." Now that's what I call seriously successful upcycling. Let the Games begin!
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