Gold, Silver, Bronze... Recycled Cell Phone?

The committee in charge of the next series of Olympic events, which is set to take place in Tokyo, Japan in 2020, announced last year their intentions to make the gold, silver and bronze medals out of old recycled cell phones.

The organizers of this project have asked those that have old cell phones to drop them off at any of the 2,400 designated collection locations, which are scattered across the country. The committee has a goal to reach eight tons of gold, silver and copper from the millions of donated cell phones, as well as other recycled electronics. They claim that after the processing is completed, it should leave them with two tons of purified metal. This is enough to manufacture the 5,000 medals to be awarded to the winning athletes of the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics.

Sports Director of Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Koji Murofushi, was quoted as saying, "There's quite a limit on the resources of our earth, and so recycling these things and giving them a new use will make us all about the environment. Having a project that allows all the people of Japan to take part in creating the medals that will be hung around athletes' necks is really good" (Jason Daley).

However, this isn't the only motivation for the project. The 2020 Olympics has recently taken fire for the game's increasing price tag. The latest reports show the game could cost $30 billion, which is four times the initial figures and triple the cost of the 2012 London Olympic games.

To some's surprise, this is not the first time the medals awarded were made from recycled material. In fact, those given out in the 2016 Rio Olympics were made of 30 percent recycled mirrors, solder and x-ray plates. The 2010 Vancouver games used metals recycled from electronics as well, but only maxed out at 1.5 percent.

Tokyo hopes to make all the awarded medals completely from the recycled donated cell phones and other electronics.

The full article can be read here.

Daley, Jason. "Japan Plans To Make Olympic Medals Out Of Electronic Waste." Smithsonian, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tokyo-will-make-olympic-medals-out-recycled-electronics-180962036/