Photos: Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images, Peter Dazeley/Getty Images
Olympics officials report that the prestigious medal awards created for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics have been produced from recycled electronic devices such as cell phones.
The recycled devices were specifically used to produce this year's gold, silver and bronze Olympic and Paralympic medals.
The project spanned over two years prior to the Olympics, where 78,985 tons of electronic devices, of which 6.21 million cell phones, were collected from across Japan to create the 5,000 Olympic medals that are awarded in Tokyo.
The process involved the smelting of particular components of the devices to obtain the gold, silver and bronze elements required for each of the medals. This includes the heating and melting of the components in order to extract a base metal.
This is the first time in the history of the Olympic Games that recycled materials are used to create the medals and the first time that ordinary citizens were involved in their production.
The recycled Olympic medals are only a part of the larger sustainability project of the Tokyo Olympics. The accommodations built also include recycled materials such as the beds, which were made from recycled cardboard.
This is partly due to the fact that the Olympic Games have come under criticism for their lack of sustainability. An example being the PyeongChang Olympic Stadium that hosted the 2018 Winter Olympics, which cost $100 million to build and was nevertheless torn down following the Games.
[h/t: Insider]
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