Tokyo Olympics going for gold

The medals awarded at the Tokyo Olympic Games were made from 78,985 tonnes of recycled electronic devices including mobile phones. How cool is that! 

The Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics required over 5,000 gold, bronze and silver medals to be produced for athletes. The sustainable medals have been crafted as part of a wider sustainability effort as part of the games and we think that’s just great!

Over a period of two years, the Tokyo 2020 Medal Project collected 78,985 tonnes of electronic devices from across Japan including 6.21 million cell phones. The gold, silver and bronze elements of the devices were obtained through smelting, which involves heating and melting to extract a base metal.

Tokyo took on a very sustainable approach to hosting the Olympics and several efforts were made to keep the games as eco-friendly as possible. In addition to the medals being made from recycled materials, beds in the Olympic Village were made from recycled cardboard and the podiums were made from recycled plastic. And if that wasn’t already an incredible effort, the uniforms worn by the torchbearers were also partially made from recycled plastic bottles!

“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,” Tokyo 2020 said.