Tokyo 2020 Olympics Organisers Unveil Recycled Medal Designs
Wednesday, July 24, 2019 - 17:18:31
The first look at the medals made from recycled electronics which will be presented to winning athletes at next year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo has come in the form of an official snapshot published this week.
The event, to be held in Japan almost exactly 12 months from now, will be the first Olympics at which all of the gold, silver and bronze medals awarded will be made using materials reclaimed from old mobile phones, computers, appliances and other gadgets.
Japan is known for its prowess in the design and manufacturing of electronics, so it is no surprise that organisers decided to make e-waste an important aspect of the Tokyo Olympics.
A total of 5000 medals will be presented over the course of the games, and the designs which were decided upon for the final product were actually sourced from a pool of over 400 different potential options.
It took around two years for enough metals to be reclaimed from old devices in order to provide enough materials for all of these medals. Thousands of retail outlets, schools, universities and other organisations held collections during this period.
Electronics weighing in at almost 80 tonnes were gathered together thanks to public donations, amongst which were more than six million unwanted smartphones.
Over 4 tonnes of silver, 3 tonnes of bronze and 30kg of gold were pulled from these products, with the donation scheme finally closing in March this year.
Earlier Olympic Games organisers had dabbled with using recycled metals to make medals, but Tokyo will be the first event at which every single medal is manufactured in this way.
Now that a precedent has been set, surely all future games will follow a similar route to create unique and sustainable medals for winners.
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