Mobile recycling for next Olympic Games reached
Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - 10:23:27
In two years’ time when the Olympics heads to the Japanese capital of Tokyo, the medals dished out to victorious athletes at the games will be made using metals gleaned from recycled electronics, including old mobile phones.
When this project was announced a couple of years ago, it was heralded as being an impressively forward-thinking approach which would help define the wider ethos of the event as a whole.
Now it has been announced that enough used tech has been processed to allow a complete run of bronze medals to be manufactured.
The Mainichi reports that there is still a need for more gold and silver to be recovered from unwanted smartphones and other gadgets in order to create the rest of the medals ahead of the games. However, the fact that this initial milestone has been reached is a promising sign that everything will be ready in time for 2020.
Gold in particular is seen as being in short supply, with around 16.5kg of the precious metal having been stripped out of outdated devices so far.
The aim now is to boost the profile of the recycling scheme and encourage more members of the public in Japan to donate their archaic hardware to this good cause.
The organisers of the games are hoping to generate no waste whatsoever during the event, which is an impressive aim and yet one which might prove a little more challenging to achieve than previously anticipated.
The final push for recycling in order to produce the medals in time will come to an end in the first half of 2019, so there is a fairly tight deadline to hit. Hopefully this will not prove an insurmountable challenge and athletes will have even more reason to wear their medals with pride.
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