Tokyo 2020’s Olympic Medals are made from Recycled Electronics
Aug 02, 2019
It is almost one year from now for 2020 Summer Olympics and The Tokyo 2020 Medal Project has generated the collection of nearly 80,000 tons of mobile phones and small electronic devices around Japan, that will be used in making all the gold, silver and bronze Olympic and Paralympic medals
There will be roughly 5,000 medals given between the games and for that over 6 million mobile phones are to be used in this project.
As a result of the two-year donation drive, Tokyo 2020 announced that 100% of the metals used to make the shiny awards will be extracted from materials found in donated electronics and phones.
The nearly 158 million pounds of donated electronics was compact down to approximately 71 pounds of gold, 7,700 pounds of silver, and 4,850 pounds of bronze.
The metals will be fused into Olympic medal following a process of dismantling, extracting and refining, by medal designer Junichi Kawanishi. The design of the medals was released by Tokyo 2020 on Wednesday.
Project organizers expect that the nationwide electronics drive will help create a theme of resourcefulness for the Tokyo games.
The organization's website reads: "We hope that our project to recycle small consumer electronics and our efforts to contribute to an environmentally friendly and sustainable society will become a legacy of the Tokyo 2020 Games,"