Abe pledged in Rio that he will work hard to host the best Games yet but Tokyo’s Olympic preparations have suffered high-profile setbacks including soaring costs and having to redesign the Games logo after accusations of plagiarism.
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But it was the appearance of Japanese PM Shinzo Abe dressed as computer game character Super Mario that appears to have people talking.
If the Rio 2016 closing ceremony showed us anything about what to expect from the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, it’s that the Japanese will be leaning heavily on their pop culture icons – of which there are many.
Takeshi Kuroda, president of ReNet Japan Group, is backing the plan.
Approximately 9.6 kg of gold, 1,210 kg of silver and 700 kg of copper-the primary component of bronze-were used to produce medals for the 2012 Olympic games in London, the Nikkei Asian Review reports.
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. It makes sense and won’t take away from the value of the medals because only a small percentage of the materials used are actually the precious metals.
In contrast, the metal recovered from consumer electronics in Japan in 2014 included 143kg of gold, 1,566kg of silver and 1,112 tons of copper. In 2013, Japan’s almost 128 million strong population unloaded 17.3 kilograms of electronic waste per person, and about 556,000 tons of e-waste were collected and treated in Japan.
The Olympic planning committee is also working with tech companies to pitch ideas for electronic recycling collection programs. Both gold and silver medals are 92.5% silver.
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This recycled metal medals scheme is not without its challenges, though, as the nation hasn’t fully implemented a collection system for consumer e-waste, even with the passage of a 2013 law calling for the recycling of all small home appliances.
