July 30, 2019

2020 Olympic Medals Will Be Made From Recycled Electronics

 electronics

  

 The 2020 Olympics, which will be held in Tokyo, will be here before we know it; in fact, the medals for the Olympics have just been unveiled.  This time the medals will be made using materials extracted from discarded electronic devices (including laptops, smartphones, and digital cameras). The Olympic Organizing Committee in Japan has been collecting discarded electronic devices since 2017 in order to extract enough materials to make the 5,000 medals.  So far they have extracted 28.4 kg of gold, 3,500kg of silver, and 2,700kg of bronze. They are very close to reaching their goal amount of extracted materials.  Olympic medals haven't been made of solid gold since 1912. For the 2020 medals, the gold medal is silver plated with gold, the silver medal is pure silver, and the bronze is a mixture of copper and zinc.  We posted about how the Brazil 2016 games featured eco-friendly medals and it seems that the Olympics want to continue on a sustainable path with these upcycled medals.  Check out the medals below!

 

2020 recycled olympic medals