Tokyo’s Olympic Medals Could Be Made From Recycled Smartphones

In case you didn’t already know, the 2020 Olympic games will be held in Tokyo, Japan. In fact just recently Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made an appearance at the closing ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympics where he appeared on stage dressed as Mario, which we have to say was rather sporting of him.

That being said, plans for the 2020 games are already underway. According to a report from the Nikkei Asian Review (via The Verge), there are already plans for what the medals would be made of. Apparently there is an idea being tossed around right now in which the medals could be made from discarded smartphones.

This would not only be good for the environment, but it could deal with e-waste. It has been estimated that the gold and silver in discarded electronics makes up for 16% and 22% of the global supply respectively, meaning that they should be more than sufficient to produce enough to create the metal for the Olympics.

For example in 2014 alone, Japan managed to recover 143kg of gold, 1,566kg of silver, and 1,112kg of copper. In 2012, the metals used to award the athletes consisted of 9.6kg of gold, 1,210kg of silver, and 700kg of copper, so like we said, Japan appears to have more than enough supply, although right now the issue would be to setup some kind of concrete collection plan to get themselves ready for the games.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones, General
Tags: Japan, sports