2020 Tokyo Olympic Games Medal To Be Made From Recycled Mobile Phones

First Posted: Feb 04, 2017 03:20 AM EST

The next Olympics Games will be held in Tokyo, Japan. What is unique about this coming Olympics is that all its Olympic and Paralympic medals will be made from recycled mobile phones.

With this, the officials are asking the Japanese public to donate old phones and small appliances to collect two tons of gold, silver and bronze for the 5,000 medals. 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games sports director Koji Murofushi said that a project that allows people of Japan to take part in creating the medals is good. He further said that there is a limit on the resources of the planet Earth, so recycling these things will make them think about the environment.

The committee is setting up about 2,400 collection boxes at mobile phone stores across the nation. The project aims to promote sustainability and lessen the costs.

Tokyo's Olympic medals will be crafted from old gadgets https://t.co/cQPEnMuC6B pic.twitter.com/ZFuKKSXCO3

— Engadget (@engadget) February 2, 2017

So, how does the recycling work? The consumer electronics like smartphones and tablets have gold, platinum, palladium, silver, cobalt, lithium and nickel. Likewise, the scrap cars and home appliances like air conditioners and fridges also have these rarer metal and base metals such as copper, lead, iron and zinc. The recycling companies gather them or buy tons of these industrial scraps. Then, they use chemical processes to obtain and separate the different metals, according to BBC News.

The organizing committee is collaborating with NTT Docomo, which is Japan's biggest telecom and the Japan Environmental Sanitation Center to collect the needed gadgets. The committee said it needs about millions of mobile phones to produce 5,000 Olympic medals, according to Gizmodo.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games will be the first time to grant medals that will be made up from metals inside old gadgets. The committee said that the gold medals will be created from 100 percent recycled material. Isn't that clean and environmental-friendly Olympic medal?