Tokyo 2020 will have challenges of its own

The 2016 Rio Olympic games concluded on August 21, and now the world is looking forward to the next Olympic games that will be held in Tokyo in 2020. In fact, it is estimated that the country has 16 per cent of the world’s gold reserves and 22 per cent of the silver, more than countries that mine for the stuff.

Japan, like most countries, has laws created to stop discarded electronics ending up in landfill, with ambitious targets of 1kg per head per year cited.

So for the 2020 Games, Japan will probably have to ask individual countries or companies to contribute towards the recycled metal collection effort. The idea of using metals from recycled electronics was first discussed at a June meeting in Tokyo.

The London Olympic games used 9.6kg of gold, 1,210kg of silver and 700kg of copper (the main ingredient used when making bronze) to make its medals in 2012.

A lot of the electronics now collected through the programmes are already being recycled into other products, meaning that more of the electronics Japan’s residents discard each year will need to be collected.

Yoshida said she expects the “excitement of Rio to come back during the Tokyo Olympics”.

However, there’s one slight issue: now, Japan’s recycled precious materials are used to make new electronic devices, and it’s hard to see the nation’s citizens foregoing a new Blu-ray player or smartphone upgrade in order to help out. Unfortunately, collecting enough material might be a problem.

The IOC minimum requirement for a gold medal is 6g of the pure yellow metal.

It is estimated that 16 percent of the world’s gold and 22 percent on the world’s silver is now sitting inside gadgets in Japan. In comparison, Japan was able to recover 143kg of gold, 1,566kg of silver and 1,112 tons of copper in 2014 alone from consumer electronics which were thrown away.

Advertisement

“Central and local governments should be in charge of publicizing such private services”, Kuroda told Nikkei. “If this public-private cooperation progress, the collection of electronic waste should also progress”.